I shot this photo on March 1st. 2015 -with the telephoto function and the ‘sports’ function both active. Full sized, this looks more like a painting than a photograph, I shrunk it down here so it would fit in all our blogs. This is a mother and two of three yearling offspring. -Don’t know if all the children are hers- She is the gutsy-est member of the herd or herds that come around, acts like she almost trusts me. She will warily stand there while four or more younger deer turn tail and srpint off in different directions. —jim w—

–— This morning I woke up to ‘wump’ sounds, guessed that heavy sheets of snow might be sliding off the roof, I got up and stumbled around at about 6:19 am, and was surprised to see how light it was outside. It felt like, at that time last week, it was still dark out there. When I saw the temperature outside was at -28.9°C / -21°F I thought the wump sounds were probably more like the house’s frame freezing in the cold.

This was early Monday morning, March 2nd- It was still snowing lightly. But we didn’t get enough snow to merit a visit from the snow plows that frequently make it impossible to get out of our driveway here. One peculiar effect of this year’s snow, after what fell as light and fluffy stuff, the plows come by and give us a two and a half to three feet high ridge blocking the driveway, not with light fluffy stuff, but with hard frozen stuff, that isn’t really heavy, it’s like the weight and consistency of dry ice. -Weird- —jim w—

This is our driveway from inside the porch at about 8 am this morning, March 6th, 2015. Yesterday, I caught a glimpse of the driveway from our glassed-in porch and thought it was worth photographing and keeping somewhere- But I was busy fixing a broken bed frame (Yup, the dog did break the bed the night before. Our 125 pound Labrador thinks he’s the size of a chihuahua, and wants to sleep between us. The twenty five pound orange cat wants to sleep on my chest. Cathi needs her sleep to deal with her high pressure job and this makes for some interesting dilemmas, including bed frames that break apart at 2:34 am.)

Friday, March 6th, 2015- around 8 am. The pile that began beside the outside section of our porch now covers about half of that outside deck, and reaches the edge of the porch roof there. Before next year I want to cover the outside edge of the porch roof, back maybe a couple feet, with black metal to discourage the ice formation we got this year from thinking it can come back any time it wants to. I’m thinking we may need vertical bits of black metal high enough to catch the sun and warm up enough to melt any snow and ice that forms there.

— Yesterday I had felt a burst of optimism after feeling oppressed by a silly dry skin rash drove me to distraction for almost a week. And then Cathi sent me a link to something that led me to an article that might be ‘slightly out there-‘ but made a lot of sense to me. — I’m going to copy and paste that article here. Since this goes up on facebook- it will reappear there, but some things are worth repeating:

URGENT NOTICE TO ALL OF GROUND CREW. A set of events that were set into motion resulted in a decision that will change the world as we know it. A few days ago I have received a transmission which is highly important for all of you to read. In it our Galactic Star Aliances talk about what has occurred and what is about to happen around March 20th, the “dark moon” as they call it, which is the solar eclipse.

Please be mindful of what you allow into your psyche. The times ahead are incredibly auspicious, everything that you want to happen will, therefore be careful what you wish for, and whatever you put into motion now will manifest very quickly into your reality. This is the time to create a beautiful new world, or rather restore it to the pristine state that it once were. Many in know understand the importance of these magnificent energies entering GAIA and so will try to pull your energy to them. Please focus on your now moment, disregarding whatever the media will try to feed you, in order to move your focus away from what you are truly here to do and are trying to achieve. The times between now and September are incredibly important. The more positive you stay the more light you can anchor, the better everything will be once we move closer and closer to September.

— I don’t know much about the background of the web site this was posted on. I’m not sure who the ‘Galactic Star Aliances’ might be. But when I wake up feeling a lot more optimistic than when I go to sleep I sometimes think I may have learned something while bopping around in dream land.

— Take nothing at face value, keep ‘reality testing’ any information you get, no matter how truthful or weird it might sound at first- I’ve had the feeling that we have forces of light and darkness working over time to convince us that one side or the other has it right, as if they believe that whichever side can convince the most people – above a critical mass- of which good or evil future is coming our way- that side wins. I also had the idea that our reality might split in two with the ‘good’ people waking up miraculously in the ‘New Heaven – New Earth’ world and the ‘bad guys’ waking up to a nuclear winter where they can get a nice close up view of what their beliefs and attitudes can manifest for them.

Don’t Block My Internet Demonstration in New York – Don’t know whether this is ‘the city’ or where it might be and I don’t have the time to check it out. —djo—

Ack! This is what happens when parallel worlds collide. Run for cover! Aaaaaaa—– { Wink } —djo—

Net Neutrality – the phrase doesn’t pack the right punch. It sounds ambiguous. Keep the Net Honest and Free. —djo—

Reject the KeystoneXL Pipeline. Put the Tarsands out of business. —djo—

My favourite ‘Significant Other’ gave me the news that Citizen Four won the Oscar for best Documentary and Neil Patrick Harris tried to put the gay rights movement back a few decades by calling Ed Snowden a Traitor. “He couldn’t be here for some treason-” She says she used to like N.P.H. but his jokes are coming out way too mean spirited. & He seems to have forgotten that if it wasn’t for people like Edward Snowden, people like him would be jailed, if not lynched for sodomy and other ‘perversions and unnatural sex acts’ —djo—

If Harper wins another term as Prime Minister I will know this world has gone to hell and they didn’t even offer us a hand basket. What the bleep is a handbasket anyway? —djo—

I hope you can read this. “Born again Fascist Prime Minister guts Environmental and Consumer Protection Laws to fleece the economy of Canada.” —djo—

“The Secret Police Creation Act?” —djo— *** According to this – The Railroad company that tried to sell off its service between Ottawa and Petawawa, where the big army base is, couldn’t get anybody to offer them what they wanted for a price, so they ripped all their tracks out and carted them away to melt them down and sell the metal to the highest bidder — Under item (f) above that makes them terrorists, right? Wanna bet the government would not go after them with an arrest warrant or perform a ‘snatch and grab’ in the night so they would wake up in Git-Mo? *** —jim w—

Niagara Falls photo taken on February 17th. I don’t see the falls here, do you?

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Asking if torture works might be the wrong question, but the answer is, “No- it doesn’t work. It’s pure b.s. and makes for good fear tactics, and instant mind control- that’s all it’s good for. Mind Control.” —djo—

A couple of my favorite prophecies lately include the one that says that those who believe that knowledge is power and feel they have a right to lie to us to keep that power to themselves will be unmasked and publicly humiliated, & stripped of all power. —djo—

Measles documented among the fully immunized.

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A Florida based artist has been told to stop selling miniature versions of the Super Bowl halftime ‘character’ sharks.

Blowtorches being used to melt sidewalk ice in Windsor { * I think I remember a really old issue of Mad Magazine suggesting various ways snow cleanup could be made much more effective and easier – one of them involved flame throwers, but the ‘after’ frame showed an entire city under about 20 feet of water. * —djo— }

Irving pipeline gets retroactive approval fro EUB { * New Brunswick’s Energy and Utilities Board has granted an Irving Oil company retroactive permission to build an oil pipeline that the company already built without permission last year. * —“Not Good,” —djo— }

Larry’s Gulch review findings will ‘absolutely’ be made public { * This is a New Brunswick ‘scandal’ that sounds way too much like a slight of hand distraction to take your attention away from something else. The Province owns a multi-million dollar fishing lodge where they entertained visiting politicians and invited newspaper reporters who were fired for conflict of interest violations. There also seems to be some confusion over when the lodge went from being ‘private’ to ‘publicly owned’ & where the line between private and public functions was drawn. The new Liberal government has decided that the lodge can only be used for functions designed to bring jobs to New Brunswick. *** “Any time I hear a politician utter words like ‘jobs’ or ‘Leadership’ I know my ears are about to be assaulted by pure and utter b.s.” — Douglas Jay Otterson *** * —djo— }

Energy East Pipeline construction training premature, David Coon says. { * The Energy East Pipeline is a project that is being bitterly contested in Quebec. Activists cite dangers to wildlife, and say the claims of loads of jobs for local people is highly over-estimated and point out that New Brunswick will lose money in this deal unless they re-write the agreement with the corporations that will own the pipeline. And instead of refining and distributing the gas/oil the pipeline is supposed to deliver, here, they claim the resources would be exported, benefiting foreign interests at our expense. Oh, and Irving Oil stands to save and reap loads of money if this goes through. * —djo— }

Mounting snow days leave schools scrambling { }

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“Sunrise In Venice” — I used to believe it wasn’t worth the hassle to visit Europe or anywhere else, Venice? I’d probably feel depressed that I had to leave and couldn’t spend several life times watching the sun rise from one of those balconies. Do any of them face the sun rise? —djo—

Canada and the U.S. aren’t the only countries in this world that are in trouble with their Karma. —djo—

End Homelessness Now. It’s much more cost effective to give homeless people a place to live than to leave them out in the cold. —djo—

“Canada Jettisons Rights and Land Claims in a bid to label environmentalists as terrorists.” —djo—

“Anti-Terror Legislation is aimed at labeling Environmental Activists as terrorists.”

The Harper government’s deregulations seen as the real cause of the Lac-Megantic tragedy.

From OccupyWallStreet-NYC & The Electronic Freedom Foundation, thanks to “—jda—“

-Um, another theory: The ‘War on Drugs’ is a manipulation to keep the ‘street prices’ of drugs high so the C.I.A. and other ‘black-ops’ groups who traffic in those drugs to keep their budgets secret can really cash in on their highly profitable business. They do want a Police State, but the ‘war on drugs’ is just one more strategy designed to bring that about. —djo—

Human Rights are under attack around the world, not just in the USA and Canada

Follow these links, even if you have to type them in manually, this guy is the real thing. —djo—

God Bless Ed Snowden – And why do those guys on the right look like somebody has a gun pointed at their private parts? —djo—

Keep up the good work 🙂

I wish I said that- —djo—

It is refreshing to see any half-way main-stream news organization showing anything positive about any group that has been targeted for divisive/’divide-and-conquer’ propaganda. “Women and Children First” was just one of many positive philosophical ideas that came from Islam. —djo—

“Happiness can only be found within” —djo—

Liberate yourself from the politix of fear – ignore the main stream news. —djo—

— We should quit here and publish this fiasco before we look at the clock and realize it’s next week already and we haven’t gotten anything done in our ‘real lives’ —djo—

Blowtorches being used to melt sidewalk ice in Windsor { * I think I remember a really old issue of Mad Magazine suggesting various ways snow cleanup could be made much more effective and easier – one of them involved flame throwers, but the ‘after’ frame showed an entire city under about 20 feet of water. * —djo— }

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New words to describe extreme weather? = “Freeze-nado” ? Works for me. —djo—

The Big Chill – Version 2015 – Hits the Maritimes-

Local / New Brunswick / Maritime News:

Liberals plan to scrap HST referendum requirement { }

Irving pipeline gets retroactive approval fro EUB { * New Brunswick’s Energy and Utilities Board has granted an Irving Oil company retroactive permission to build an oil pipeline that the company already built without permission last year. * —“Not Good,” —djo— }

Larry’s Gulch review findings will ‘absolutely’ be made public { * This is a New Brunswick ‘scandal’ that sounds way too much like a slight of hand distraction to take your attention away from something else. The Province owns a multi-million dollar fishing lodge where they entertained visiting politicians and invited newspaper reporters who were fired for conflict of interest violations. There also seems to be some confusion over when the lodge went from being ‘private’ to ‘publicly owned’ & where the line between private and public functions was drawn. The new Liberal government has decided that the lodge can only be used for functions designed to bring jobs to New Brunswick. *** “Any time I hear a politician utter words like ‘jobs’ or ‘Leadership’ I know my ears are about to be assaulted by pure and utter b.s.” — Douglas Jay Otterson *** * —djo— }

Energy East Pipeline construction training premature, David Coon says. { * The Energy East Pipeline is a project that is being bitterly contested in Quebec. Activists cite dangers to wildlife, and say the claims of loads of jobs for local people is highly over-estimated and point out that New Brunswick will lose money in this deal unless they re-write the agreement with the corporations that will own the pipeline. And instead of refining and distributing the gas/oil the pipeline is supposed to deliver, here, they claim the resources would be exported, benefiting foreign interests at our expense. Oh, and Irving Oil stands to save and reap loads of money if this goes through. * —djo— }

Mounting snow days leave schools scrambling { }

==============

End Homelessness Now. It’s much more cost effective to give homeless people a place to live than to leave them out in the cold. —djo—

“Canada Jettisons Rights and Land Claims in a bid to label environmentalists as terrorists.” —djo—

“Anti-Terror Legislation is aimed at labeling Environmental Activists as terrorists.”

The Harper government’s deregulations seen as the real cause of the Lac-Megantic tragedy.

From OccupyWallStreet-NYC & The Electronic Freedom Foundation, thanks to “—jda—“

-Um, another theory: The ‘War on Drugs’ is a manipulation to keep the ‘street prices’ of drugs high so the C.I.A. and other ‘black-ops’ groups who traffic in those drugs to keep their budgets secret can really cash in on their highly profitable business. They do want a Police State, but the ‘war on drugs’ is just one more strategy designed to bring that about. —djo—

Human Rights are under attack around the world, not just in the USA and Canada

Follow these links, even if you have to type them in manually, this guy is the real thing. —djo—

Student says U of T failed to help her avoid attacker {* The University of Toronto is investigating the way it handled a report of sexual assault after a student says the school failed to help her avoid her attacker in classes she shared with him, CBC News has learned. * —djo— }

Lesley Gore, singer of ‘It’s My Party’ and ‘You Don’t Own Me’, dead at 68 { * I remember seeing her on a local -New Jersey/New York City area- Rock and Roll teevee program, after lip-syncing one of her hits – smile and give the host of the program a list of reasons why she would make the perfect girl friend for Paul McCartney. One of her reasons was that they were both left handed. * —djo— }

RCMP accused of helping mother abduct baby to Australia { * The father is suing the RCMP, alleging the force helped her commit a criminal offence. * —djo— }

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A Florida based artist has been told to stop selling miniature versions of the Super Bowl halftime ‘character’ sharks.

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Some of the most accurate ‘prognosticators’/Futurists/’psychics’ believe there won’t be an election in 2016. Some say there will be a Fascist regime which will have declared Martial Law in the USA. Others believe the USA will be paralyzed from strife and infrastructure collapse and won’t be able to function. —djo—

I thought I should pop something that isn’t completely negative in here before things get out of hand… —djo—

DICKINSON, N.D. – The North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources’ Division of Oil and Gas has allowed saltwater-disposal wells to continue injecting fluid underground even as mechanical integrity tests – meant to detect weaknesses in the well’s construction – have indicated leaks in parts of the wells’ multiple layers of casing.

—Adverisements deleted—

A review of 449 well files and more than 2,090 mechanical integrity test reports show how state officials conditionally approve disposal wells even after they don’t meet widely accepted pressure testing standards.

Like oil and gas wells, disposal wells consist of multiple layers of steel and concrete tubing that stretch past layers of soil, rock and aquifers, thousands of feet underground. But instead of carrying oil and gas to the surface, injection wells pressurize saltwater – commonly referred to as produced water – shooting it back underground into porous geological formations.

While the records don’t document any instances of groundwater contamination, they highlight how the agency has allowed wells with structural problems to operate, sometimes for years, even though guidance documents from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommend wells with significant pressure losses be repaired within 270 days and that wells with less than two viable layers of casing be shut down during that time.

Officials with the Division of Oil and Gas said they have the authority to approve the wells for use because they were given primary enforcement responsibilities by the EPA, and that the conditional approval of wells are not considered test failures, suggesting the EPA guidance doesn’t apply to those cases.

Mark Bohrer, the agency’s underground injection control manager, said decisions to conditionally approve wells that lose pressure during testing were based on geology and petroleum engineering, and that if there was any threat to drinking water, the wells would be shut down.

“If we had any inkling that there would be contamination of (U.S. drinking water), the well would be shut in,” Bohrer said. “That is the last thing I want to do is contaminate somebody’s freshwater well.”

However, a review of state and federal documents, as well as interviews with geologists, engineers, environmental policy experts and lawyers who have litigated under the Safe Drinking Water Act, suggests the agency is loosely interpreting guidance and protocols that are meant to maintain the multiple layers of protection that separate aquifers from the toxic saltwater.

In parts of North Dakota, rural landowners rely on underground aquifers as a source of drinking water for themselves and their livestock.

“The reason well integrity is important is because if you develop some sort of leak then you could have fluid that moves, in the worst case, up to an aquifer,” said William Fleckenstein, a professor of petroleum engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. “Typically, that is what you are trying to avoid with the variety of integrity tests that are done.”

While saltwater spills on the surface can contaminate soil, leaving behind withered crops and barren patches of land, scientists have found that saltwater contamination of an aquifer can last for decades, with no economically feasible way to clean it up.

“It doesn’t just flush out and disappear,” said Joanna Thamke, a hydrologist with theU.S. Geological Survey, who has studied saltwater contamination of aquifers in Montana and North Dakota.

Saltwater is a mixture of hydraulic fracturing fluid – the water and proprietary chemicals that companies use to break apart shale deposits deep underground – and produced water – the briny solution trapped with oil and gas in those formations.

The toxic mix often contains significant levels of arsenic, lead, ammonium, benzene, bromide, radioactive material and high concentrations of chlorides. In North Dakota, saltwater has been shown to have ammonium levels at 300 times the EPA-recommended limit and chloride levels high enough that if any more salt was added, it wouldn’t be dissolved in the fluid.

While medical researchers have only begun to analyze how low levels of continued exposure to these oil and gas contaminants through the environment can affect people, medical science has already shown that high concentrations of these elements can cause cancer, neurological disorders and birth defects.

Bohrer said there are no reported cases of a saltwater disposal well contaminating an underground aquifer in North Dakota and at no point has the agency placed underground aquifers at risk to contamination.

But energy and public health experts said the long-term impact saltwater can have on an aquifer and the danger the fluid can pose to public health emphasizes the importance of constantly maintaining the mechanical integrity of disposal wells.

State officials said the EPA guidance documents related to integrity testing don’t hold the same standing as the administrative rules, and that the agency has the authority to choose which EPA guidelines to follow.

“There is a big difference between guidance and having your own (underground injection control) program,” said Alison Ritter, the public information specialist for the Division of Oil and Gas.

But environmental lawyers who reviewed the guidance documents said the state’s actions were legally questionable and could open the agency up to citizen lawsuits or a review by the EPA if enough people petitioned federal officials.

Bohrer said EPA officials were fully aware of how the Division of Oil and Gas operates the injection control program in North Dakota, but federal reports and email responses from the EPA Region 8 office in Denver suggest the federal agency’s oversight of state injection programs is limited due to staffing and budget constraints.

The findings of a Forum News Service investigation come at a time when landowners and Democratic legislators have called for a performance review audit of the Division of Oil and Gas and as agency officials have resisted legislation that would separate their dual roles as the regulator and promoter of the state’s oil industry.

As large surface spills have flowed onto farmers’ fields and into streams, grabbing public attention and causing lawmakers to rethink regulations over oil and saltwater pipelines, the documents highlight another, largely unseen but vital, part of the agency’s regulatory responsibilities.

The integrity reports raise questions about the agency’s criteria for pressure testing and conditional approvals, as the number of operating disposal wells in the state increased from 293 to 486 in the past seven years and the amount of saltwater disposed of jumped from 94 million to 350 million barrels in 2014.

Officials with the Division of Oil and Gas disagreed with the points raised by Forum News Service and in an email response said that if anyone is to fully understand the agency’s underground injection control program they should have a strong background in petroleum engineering and geology.

“The UIC program is highly technical and complex, with regulatory development and implementation evolving over time,” Ritter wrote in an email.

Regulations covering underground injection control programs began in the early 1980s under the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974, after federal lawmakers recognized the threat that injection wells posed to underground aquifers.

As part of the law, states could apply to take over primary enforcement responsibilities for injection wells, including Class II wells that handle saltwater and other liquid waste produced during the oil and gas drilling process.

When a production well is hydraulically fractured, millions of gallons of saltwater surge back to the surface with the oil, and continue to flow throughout the lifespan of the well. This large influx of liquid waste requires companies to dispose of the toxic fluid as long as the well is in operation.

While injecting saltwater underground has been shown to be a better option than attempting to treat the fluid or storing it in pits, environmental policy experts point out that the strict guidance regarding injection wells is in place to eliminate any chance of the steel and concrete tubing becoming pathways through which saltwater leaks into or near an underground source of drinking water.

In order for the Division of Oil and Gas to take over the underground injection control program in 1983, the state had to adopt rules that met minimum standards for construction, permitting, monitoring, enforcement and plugging of the wells.

But while those rules require wells to pass mechanical integrity tests every five years without a “significant leak,” Bohrer said the agency doesn’t have guidance to define what a significant leak is.

The most common mechanical integrity test conducted is a standard annular pressure test (SAPT) where the annulus, the space between the casing and production tubing, is pressurized with liquid to see if it holds.

Since the 1980s, at least 13 states and the EPA have adopted administrative rules or guidance defining the standards for pressure testing, including some of the country’s largest oil producing states, like Montana, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas.

In all of those cases, the rules and guidelines state that tests are considered failures if a well loses more than 5 to 10 percent of the pressure placed on the annulus over 15 to 30 minutes.

Officials with the Division of Oil and Gas took issue with the comparison of rules and guidance in other parts of the country, because those states don’t have the same geology as North Dakota, which they said is well suited for underground injection.

During an interview, Bohrer said the accepted standard for a passing pressure test is less than a 10 percent drop over 15 minutes, but state records show the agency allows companies to continue injecting fluid underground even as wells lose 11, 30 or even 70 percent of the pressure during testing.

Bohrer said the decision to conditionally approve a well is made on a case-by-case basis and that the companies have to accept certain operating rules, like yearly testing and extra pressure monitoring to make sure the production tubing – the innermost layer of steel piping that saltwater is injected through – isn’t leaking. He said operators are ordered to immediately shut in the well if a leak in the production tubing is detected.

During an interview, the Division of Oil and Gas’ staff referenced an EPA guidance document from 1992 to show it had the authority to allow wells to continue operations after significant pressure losses, but when it was pointed out in follow-up emails that the guidance document calls for wells to be repaired or plugged within 270 days, the agency stated the document didn’t apply because conditional approvals were not failures.

That same document also states that if officials can’t handle the “administrative burden” of “additional inspections” and data monitoring, they shouldn’t allow wells to operate within those 270 days.

When state inspectors conditionally approve an injection well for use in North Dakota, it requires integrity tests to be performed annually instead of every five years, and mandates that annulus pressure readings be checked monthly, like the wells’ permitted surface injection pressure.

But officials with the Division of Oil and Gas said they fully accept the extra inspection and monitoring burden and that the agency doesn’t have any problems meeting its existing regulatory duties.

When asked whether the Division of Oil and Gas collects the additional pressure readings from conditionally approved wells for monitoring purposes, Bohrer said that the agency does not and that it is up to field staff to check the readings during monthly inspections. He said companies are expected to keep those readings for several years, but the agency does not collect them as part of the well history.

“These requirements are not considered burdensome to our regulatory program, as we already inspect all UIC wells at least monthly and witness all (mechanical integrity tests),” Ritter wrote in an email response.

According to a 2014 legislative audit, the Division of Oil and Gas agreed that agency-wide inspections were not being completed within the timeframes established, but said that around 75 percent of the injection wells in the state were being visited on a monthly basis, which it said was the best rate in the country.

Ritter said the Division of Oil and Gas has 32 field inspectors and three staff members in the Bismarck office to oversee the operations of the 486 active disposal wells. The field inspectors also have other regulatory responsibilities, like rig and production well inspections.

The Division has requested another 16 full time employees to handle the agency’s permitting, monitoring and enforcement efforts.

Officials with the Division of Oil and Gas said higher emphasis is placed on disposal wells that are conditionally approved and that the monthly inspection of pressure readings and the proper construction of the wells – usually with two outer layers of steel and cement running from the surface to below the aquifer – leaves little to no chance that saltwater can escape the well.

“If your well is properly constructed, there is really no avenue available for that fluid to migrate,” Bohrer said.

‘The absence of adequate data’

While the vast majority of the wells that were reviewed had a surface and production casing running past the aquifer, state records show the Division of Oil and Gas has conditionally approved wells that only have one external layer of casing next to underground sources of drinking water.

Bohrer said there is no rule requiring injection wells to have two or more layers of external casing to operate, but according to the EPA guidance documents, wells that fail an annular pressure test and only have one external layer of casing should be shut in unless officials can verify that the leak isn’t located near the underground source of drinking water.

In May 2011, the Pan Am 501 disposal well in Burke County failed three consecutive pressure tests, but while the operator was initially ordered to stop injections until it could pass, inspectors allowed the well to operate for four days between the second and third test. It was only after the third test that inspectors noted the well only had one outer layer of casing next to the aquifer. When the well was tested for a fourth time in June 2011, it was conditionally approved after losing 10 percent of the testing pressure. It operated under that conditional approval for 16 months until it failed a test in December 2012. During that failure, the well could not be pressurized, suggesting the leak got significantly worse. After that fourth failure, the company installed a liner inside the production casing.

The Klandl 26-31X disposal well in McKenzie County has either been conditionally approved or in violation of mechanical integrity rules for much of the time between 2003 and 2012. But while it was noted in July 2007 that the well only had one layer of casing located at the depth of the aquifer, inspectors have continued to allow the well to operate under conditional approvals, even as it has lost significant pressure during testing. Over much of that time, records suggest the operator has injected saltwater at pressures above its permitted limit until March 2014, when state officials finally recognized the violation and the well was shut down.

In an email, Ritter wrote that The Press’ interpretation of the guidance – which was substantiated by lawyers consulted for the story – was flawed because a well’s tubing, casing and cement are each considered a layer of protection.

But the 1987 EPA document states that “if the outer casing is breached, even if there is cement behind the casing,” the well should be considered a significant non-compliance and be shut in until it is repaired or plugged.

In the cases of the Pan Am 501 and Klandl 26-31X disposal wells in Burke and McKenzie counties, pressure testing indicated leaks in the casings, and since both wells only had one outer layer of casing near the aquifers and the location of leaks cannot be determined by pressure testing, it left them with only one verifiable layer of protection remaining – the inner production tubing.

Bohrer said the agency meets all of the minimum standards required by federal law and that EPA guidance documents were drafted for the entire country, not for North Dakota.

“We try to mirror those things that are applicable to our situations in North Dakota,” Bohrer said. “Those are national documents – one size fits all – and we take the parts that are applicable to our state.”

Lawyers consulted for the story said the EPA guidance documents may not have the same legal standing as a rule, but argued those guidance documents are put in place to fill in the administrative gaps that rules don’t address.

“It isn’t an issue of whether there are laws on the books – in this case whether we have laws that regulate underground injection,” said Andrew Reid, an environmental and natural resources law professor at the University of Denver. “The issue is whether the state is going to enforce it and live up to the responsibility of protecting the citizens and the natural resources of the state.”

If the issue was addressed in court, Parenteau said the administrative rules and guidance documents would be reviewed as a whole.

“You have to look at all of these documents together,” he said. “That is what a judge would do.”

Business realities

When an injection well fails a mechanical integrity test and is shut down, it can cost operators tens of thousands of dollars in lost profits and repairs.

The most common repair for a disposal well is a tubing replacement, where a workover rig pulls the internal production tubing out of the well, checking it for holes and weaknesses and replacing the sections of the steel or fiberglass pipe that are leaking.

“At the end of the day, if you have a hole in your production tubing, it’s a simple matter to change that out,” said Fleckenstein, who is currently working on a National Science Foundation project studying the effects of gas development on air and water resources.

But if a pressure test indicates a hole in the well’s casing, which records show is often the case for wells that are conditionally approved, the repairs can be more difficult.

There is no way to replace the casing, Fleckenstein said, but it can be fixed by forcing cement down the well’s annulus to seal off leaks or by installing a liner inside the production casing.

Installing a casing liner the entire length of an injection well, which stretches thousands of feet, can drive up the cost of repairs, Fleckenstein said, and is usually done when a cement squeeze doesn’t work.

“It can start to cost money,” he said.

But shutting in a disposal well can have far bigger ramifications than repair costs for a single operator.

When an injection well shuts down, it can create a ripple effect in the oil industry, Bohrer said, requiring all of the oil wells that pipe or truck saltwater to that disposal site to stop production or find another well in the area.

“Should that be done in certain instances? Certainly,” Bohrer said. “It’s just the price you have to pay.”

But numbers suggest it’s difficult for a disposal well in the state to shut in operations without affecting the production wells that rely on it.

Between 2007 and 2014, the amount of saltwater disposed of in North Dakota increased by 270 percent, while the number of disposal wells handling that fluid increased by only 65 percent.

Bohrer said those business and economic realities and the state’s effort to reach and exceed 1 million barrels of oil produced per day doesn’t play any part in the agency’s decisions to conditionally approve disposal wells for use.

“That is not a significant contributing factor,” Bohrer said.

Shut ins, landowners and coincidences

In Bottineau County, the Division of Oil and Gas has begun to shut down wells that lose significant pressure during testing, even when operators request conditional approvals.

At five saltwater disposal wells in the county, inspectors have issued failures for pressure losses of more than 10 percent and ordered companies to shut down operations until the wells can be repaired or plugged, as EPA guidance recommends.

Prior to those failures, two of the wells were given conditional approvals even as they lost between 26 and 50 percent of the testing pressure.

But over the past year and a half, as members of the Northwest Landowners Association have began monitoring those wells – inspecting publicly available files, requesting documents from the Division of Oil and Gas and testifying at legislative hearings – all five of the wells have been shut in after failures.

The Jesperson 31-29 disposal well was shut down in November 2013, after losing 28 percent of the pressure during testing. Prior to that, the well had been conditionally approved since January 2007, even as it lost 28 to 50 percent of the pressure during testing.

The Cramer 1 disposal well was shut down in September 2014, after losing 25 percent of the pressure applied during testing. After the test, the operator had requested a conditional approval from the Division of Oil and Gas but was denied.

The Leo Hallof 1 disposal well was shut down in November 2014 after losing 30 percent of the testing pressure. The well had previously been conditionally approved after losing 26 percent of the testing pressure in February 2009.

The Peterson 2 disposal well was shut down in November 2014 after losing nearly all of the testing pressure over several minutes.

The Lillie Farms Partnership 1 disposal well was shut down in November 2014 after losing 50 percent of the testing pressure. It has since been repaired.

One of the wells, the Peterson 2, is also at the center of an ongoing lawsuit over the cleanup of multiple surface spills.

Officials with the Division of Oil and Gas said they were unaware that the landowners – who are some of the most vocal critics of the agency – were checking on those wells and that decisions to shut down those operations until they could pass integrity tests were based on the wells’ history, performance, geology and construction.

“If there is a lawsuit, that doesn’t tell me that they are monitoring it,” Bohrer said. “That has absolutely no influence on our decisions here in this office.”

Lynn Helms, the Department of Mineral Resources director, was deposed by lawyers representing Daryl Peterson, the landowner in the reclamation lawsuit, the same day that The Press met with Bohrer and the staff of the Division of Oil and Gas on Jan. 27.

Bohrer said the fact that all five disposal wells were shut in, after the landowners began looking into the wells, was a coincidence.

He said the agency’s focus is, and has always been, on protecting underground sources of drinking water.

“We take great pride in our program,” Bohrer said. “We inject well over 1 million barrels of saltwater per day, and I think our track record speaks for itself.” – }

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Radio Canada is the French Language Radio service of the CBC. If they hate Stephen Harper’s values, they have good reason to. He’s trying to unfund and shut them down. A lot of Canadians Hate Stephen Harper. He’s a Fascist dictator pretending to be a 21st century nice guy. & Nice guy He is NOT! —djo—

If I knew it was this easy to translate stuff I’d have been doing that all along. Even if I have absolutely no use for bing. —djo—

Dang! Too many good ‘fluff’ photos today. Well, maybe it’s more positive and would have a better effect on the collective psyche than sticking to ‘hard core news’. Ya think? & I’ve never been able to follow any of the links on these Buddhist tweets. —djo—

{ Okay, we’ve crashed twice, once when I first tried to include the photo of the orange cat between the horse and the dog, & again when I tried to add the photo of the balloons. && Between those two crashes WordPress told me I had to sign in again. Whattaya think? is there a conspiracy afoot here? 😉 }

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Oil Train derailment in West Virginia – one comment was ‘It should have been shipped via pipeline’ But are pipelines any safer? We need to switch from oil and gas to other, cheaper, more dependable renewable sources. —jim w—

Looks like things are getting nasty in an Australian dispute between coal mining interests and aboriginals and conservationists and others concerned with trying to save a rare Australian forest from destruction by the mining company. —jim w—

Jimmy Carter’s Presidency was cut short by the Iran Hostage Crisis – Which may have been orchestrated with the help of outgoing Republicans? Who knows? Anyway- with Habitat for Humanity and other projects he’s endorsed, Jimmy Carter might be the most popular ex-President alive in the US today. —jim w—

— I just watched the CNN program “The Sixties” – the ‘Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll’ episode on CNN up here in Blizzardville. I may be uniquely qualified to understand what happened in the sixties and to see through their bull chips and propaganda as they try to put their spin on things. Then the commercials come on- “Fracking will save Amerika and sparkle our economy into marvels you can’t imagine.” Bull! It will totally destroy any quality of life you imagined you could have. Next Commercial Boeing Aircraft. Those wonderful purveyors of unimaginable b.s. as they helped the military industrial complex develop weapons they want to use against you, their own country’s citizens. It made me sick. A few more US commercials I’ve missed lately and I’m convinced that television is being used by evil manipulating ice holes to try to control you through subliminal b.s. and hidden messages within messages on a level your brain cannot grasp. To mis-quote John B Wells, “Where are you going and why are you in this hand-basket?”

— Last night on Coast to Coast a.m. – guest host Connie Willis interviewed Preston Nichols, a participant in the ‘Montauk Project’, which sprang from the Monarch Project, which developed out of ‘MK-ULTRA’ – Mr Nichols said that participants in the ‘Project’ didn’t like the way it was going, with ‘throw away boys’ being raped and butchered in experimental exercises to condition and mind-control potential ‘Super Soldiers’ who supposedly have been used in ‘off-planet’ operations, time travel, wars with and against other planetary ‘aliens’; evil bull-chips operations on this planet and more. I’m going to take this stuff with more than a couple grains of salt. Mr Nichols said he went into the future and he believes our civilization came to an end in the early 2020’s. He said this was adjusted so the end happened in 2023. My feeling is that Preston Nichols had his own memories tampered with, that he believes what he told the world last night, but he was fed a line of disinformation and he’s passing that on to the rest of us. One curious thing though, he tried to talk about a split coming, with judgment going down in the early 2020’s to see who is positive enough to be allowed to go on to live in the ‘New Earth’ which he hinted would be a major tweak in the ‘matrix’ of the holographic projection that is the material universe. The funny thing is, one of the first un-finished stories I read, — written by my friend and co-web-geek/co-editor in our weird news blogging, Jim W— starts off with a newly divorced guy jogging around his his old neighbourhood and bumping into a woman he kind of liked who invited him to a party she really didn’t want to go to, but she couldn’t say no to her ‘upwardly mobile’ friends – and during the party, on a beautiful sunny day in May, a world killing blizzard develops and the jogger and his friend barely manage to get back to his house when they set out to get a couple supplies the party goers asked for, and discover that his house sits on a portal, one side of the house is sunny and warm and the other side is becoming ‘zocked in’ by the killer blizzard. A Native American/First Nations medicine man leads his tribe of survivors to the jogger’s home and asks that they be allowed to walk through to the springtime and leave the dying world behind. Jim had to explain to me that the main characters were going to find out that their world had split into two dimensions and the positive tree huggers and earth honouring people would live in plenty and harmony and the negative greedy people would be trapped in a world that was about to kill off 99% of it’s population and reduce the survivors to cave-man stone age levels. He told me that writing that became too painful, but that he might be able to finish it some day, I’m still waiting. But with Preston Nichols talking about the ‘split’ I wondered if my friend had tapped into something that was way too close to the truth about what might happen within the next ten years or so. Now that’s a chilling thought.

— Anybody out there remember the saying, “If Hitler had television, we’d all be speaking German right now?” Well, what if all of the paper clipped Fascists and Nazis brought over to the US and other ‘bastions of the free world’ brought their fascism with them and they secretly put their plans to work and now they’re almost at the point where they don’t care who knows what they’re up to because they just about have everything under control and their latest ‘Final Solution’ involves flipping a switch and broadcasting perfect mind-control commands through everybody’s television sets? Anybody who resists can have their smart meters cause catastrophic fires and/or trigger other toxic ‘accidents’ to kill off dissidents? Or maybe nano-particles you’ve been fed along with your ‘modified corn sweetener’ and other G.M.O. poisons can be triggered to cause heart attacks and/or other internal organ failures that will take you out of the picture?

Noon. Some of the wind-sculpture out the porch door on February 15th, 2015. —jim w—

More wind and snow sculpture, looking at the driveway right around noon.

Jassper, ‘boofing’ at the snowflakes. Noon-ish.

Looking over Jassper’s head toward the road we can’t see under the snow at the bottom of the hill, out what Cathi calls our ‘back door’. Noon on February 15th, 2015. —jrw—

— The howling wind is blowing so hard no snow has built up on top of the van in our driveway. Route 2 between Fredericton and the U.S. border is closed due to the storm. They ‘don’t want anybody to be stuck in the storm near the border’. —schnarr— The ‘Confederation Bridge’ is not allowing high sided trucks to make the journey from New Brunswick to Prince Edward Island. Moncton’s city services are shut down. The one p.m. news just called for 30 to 40 centimeters -12 to 16 inches. “Snow and blowing snow will continue into Monday.”

— Ah- email from Doug:

Web Cam in Ithaca at 11:20 am today – emailed by Doug Otterson

“6:39 pm on Valentine’s Day. Two minutes ago somebody was standing near the “David” legend in the snow, jumping up and down, waving at the camera.” —djo—

“6:40 pm. Coloured light pools in the blustery snow storm.” —djo—

— And now the swirling wind blown snow is spattering the window in front of the deer cams that have not been moved into place yet.

— And Doug’s email message says the sun is trying to peek out from behind the clouds in the Ithaca, New York area.

Thought for the day? “It’s bad luck to be superstitious-“

You can see the love on this dog’s face. Or maybe she’s hungry and the sick human’s spouse wouldn’t give her the good stuff? Anyway. It’s a nice touching story and love like that should start out our depressing news of the day reports, ya think? —djo—

For contrast – Yes, start your day off inspired by something positive and see if that does change the way your day unravels. —jim w—

This feels positive. Maybe things are looking up. —djo—

Weather News: Boston got as much as 37 inches of new snow on Monday, and already had two feet of snow on the ground. Public Transportation came to a grinding halt there. & It looked like Halifax and other parts of Nova Scotia were getting dumped on Tuesday. Newfoundland and Labrador are being clobbered on Thursday. With two possible Nor’Easters heading for Maritimes over the weekend. On Friday they’re telling us we’ll probably get off easy while a storm might hit Nova Scotia, But Sunday might be another ‘Major’ snow event.

I thought the church had the Knights Templars executed on Friday the 13th, like burned at the stake or worse? And we did hear that 13 was a lucky number before that. —djo—

This one hung up and acted like it would crash while I was loading it. —djo—

“Trust yourself!” —jim w—

Apple plans to go 100% Renewable Energy as soon as it can. Let’s hope this is more than an Public Relations ruse. —djo—

In our natural state, before we are poisoned by Genetically Modified Food and highly controlled media, we are really ‘nice’ beings. fear and hatred are conditioned into us by nasty people with a nasty agenda. —djo— A ‘Bodhisattva’ is an ‘Enlightened’ being who could enjoy the peace and serenity of the Heavenly Realms but comes back down here to help guide and liberate the rest of us from the negative b.s. that could lead us downward instead of up. —jim w—

Not exactly on topic, but I’ll quote John Lennon here, or post a retweet of a John Lennon quote – —jim w—

We’ve got friends who believe that climate change is a terrorist activity being engineered by nasty dark ops ice-holes with military background at the behest of corporate ice-holes who are desperate to gain or regain control over the hearts and minds of everybody on this planet, or kill us all if we resist. —djo—

This is a cool juxtaposition of messages this morning, don’t-cha think? —jim w—

As Canada moves into an election year that will start and stop a whole lot quicker than we’re used to down here in the ‘States’, Things should be heating up on both sides. My friends up there tend to gravitate toward this view- That Stephen Harper is a born again Fascist who really wants to get it right this time- —djo—

Tommy Douglas was voted something like the biggest Canadian Hero a couple years ago for conceiving and implementing the Canadian Health Care System, which greedy sonofaguns have been trying to talk down and dismantle ever since. —jim w—

The Harper government claims it was saving lots of money by cheating veterans out of their pensions and closing down offices that helped veterans get access to health care for PTSD and other conditions the government habitually denies coverage for. Meanwhile that same government has spent hundreds of times more money than it claims it saved — advertizing bogus ‘Economic Action Plan’ gains and phony apprenticeship programs with ‘interest free loans’ that suddenly are not interest free when the ‘apprentice’ graduates the programme and discovers that he or she can’t buy a decent job and owes much more than he or she can pay back while working part time flipping hamburgers or pushing donuts. —djo—

More of today’s point-counterpoint: Bernie Sanders weighs in- 🙂 & It isn’t just the U.S. and Canada that are under attack by ‘big money interests’ Look at Greece, where a lot of voters have vivid memories of what it is like to live under a Fascist regime. And look around Europe, where Portugal, Spain and too many other countries are waking up and wondering “WTF” is going on. & I’m happy to report that some of my farourite ‘Psychics’ as well as much more scientific trend watchers are seeing a messy time of it, after which the ‘Banksters’ will no longer be in power. “Half Past Human dot com” says the last Bankster will be strangled by the intestines of the last phony religious cleric after enraged ex-catholics burn down the Vatican in 2019, after learning what Organized Religion has actually been up to for the last century or more, and the Bank of the Vatican has been funding the bloody black ops mind control while Catholic Priests helped develop Nazi torture technology to sexually abuse children and turn them into ‘Manchurian Candidate’ type brain-washed victims that could be activated to pull off seemingly random breaks that are actually attacks on our freedoms and liberty. The Texas Tower sniper, the Unibomber, the guy who shot John Lennon, and most of the wild and crazy school shootings and Theater shootings are done by ‘targeted’ individuals who have been conditioned and activated to pull off inconceivable acts of terror, so the government can pass emergency legislation that takes your freedom away and gives them more and more control over everything you think do and say. —jim w—

Child Labour in 1911

Child Labour in 2015.

Here’s a ‘Then and Now’ Tweet that twitter wouldn’t let me retweet. Maybe it was deleted?—djo— & I remember 14 year olds being a lot smarter and aware than adults gave us credit for, even if we weren’t always capable of seeing ‘the whole picture’ or understanding clearly what we saw going on around us, when I was one of them. — Should I admit the Beatles hit the USA when I was a fourteen year old? —jim w—

Yesterday’s News: Smart TVs that can recognize verbal commands can listen in to any conversation inside your home while that feature is on. NSA operatives etc, can also turn that on whenever they feel like it. Samsung admitted they have ‘a third party’ monitoring everything “to know when a command is given.”

Mass shooting spree suicide plot foiled by Halifax police { * Be suspicious of this kind of headline. It might be true, but look deeper. We keep hearing that too many of these loose cannons were normal people who were ‘targeted and conditioned, then activated’ to carry out their crimes. Texas Tower shooter, Unibomber, the guy who shot John Lennon, and almost anyone, especially ‘lone gunmen’ who ‘flip out’ and shoot up schools, movie theaters, etc. They may not all be MK-Ultra but if some of them are, we have to do something about this. * —djo— }

Why are so many of Peter MacKay’s appointed judges also his friends {* Looks like another scandal is about to rock the Harper ‘government’. Peter MacKay has been in the spotlight before for inappropriate behaviour. He comes off as a mean spirited- bad loser. * —djo— }

FBI agent arranced ‘chance’ meeting with Via Rail terror suspect { * Stephen Harper is a micro-managing ice-hole. If the Canadian people re-elect him prime minister, then (1) they deserve to go to hell in a handbasket and (2) I wouldn’t believe a ‘fair election’ or honest vote count happened anywhere on this planet, ever. * —djo— }

Stephen Harper’s chief spokesman leaving PMO ahead of election { * I should quote a woman friend who lives in Canada, “More rats are jumping ship before it goes down and brings them with it”. * —djo— }

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A Florida based artist has been told to stop selling miniature versions of the Super Bowl halftime ‘character’ sharks.

Offbeat News:

How ‘Left Shark’ sparked a 3D printing legal row with Katy Perry { }

Did you leave thousands of dollars in a bundle of drapes? { }

Watch a cat dig its way out after a snowstorm { * I had to check with Jim about this one, no, it wasn’t his cat. * —djo— }

Petri Island ice fishing village invites gamers with arcade { * I had to read this one a couple times before I understood what it meant. * —djo— }

Local producers praise David Coon’s food security bill { * – Some New Brunswick entrepreneurs say Green Party Leader David Coon’s proposed Local Food Security Act will help grow a larger market for locally grown food in the province. – The proposed bill would see the provincial government give preference to local food providers to supply food for nursing homes, schools and hospitals. – It would also include better labelling for local food and bringing healthy food education to schools. – Tim Cochran of Cochran’s Country Market said he has seen firsthand the state of New Brunswick agriculture industry. – “We have a lot of farmers that I’ve been dealing with for 20 years that they’re going to retire and there isn’t the farmers there to take their place, partly because I think it’s a hard industry to break into,” Cochrane said.

Levi Lawrence, the owner of Real Food Connections, said Coon’s bill would help create a better market for local food in New Brunswick. But he said change will not happen immediately. (CBC)

– Cochran said Coon’s proposal could help make it easier for people to make a living in the agriculture industry. – “I think it’s excellent,” he said. – “From what I understand, it’s really going to promote and drive the promotion of locally grown produce and products.” – Levi Lawrence, the owner of Real Food Connections, said the act would be a step forward by building the market for local food in the province. – But he said even if the bill passes, change won’t happen overnight. – “There is still a lot of work to be done in the province in supplying, distributing and processing what we grow in the province that the act doesn’t really help us do,” Lawrence said. – “It does create a market for entrepreneurs to work on that problem and better reason to get into that business, but that’s the biggest gap we have in the province today.” – Lawrence has been expanding his local food store in Fredericton and is now getting ready to open up a store in Saint John. He went through a major crowdfunding campaignlast year. –Coon open to amendments – The bill is expected to have its second reading sometime in mid-March. If the bill passed, Coon said it would take about 12 months to get it up and running. – “It sets up an advisory committee to work with the various ministers who would be involved,” he said. – “And really that’s all it would take to get to the point where targets could be set for the province and for targets for our public institutions like schools and hospitals.” – Coon said he’s received a lot of positive feedback on the bill from agriculture organizations as well as individual MLAs. – He said he’s hopeful the bill will pass and said he is open to making amendments. – “I’m always open to amendments to make bills better so we get the best possible law in the books,” he said. – “But I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t pass. I think both parties would have to explain why they wouldn’t support it if it didn’t pass.” – A government spokesperson said Coon’s bill is being studied. – “The government has committed to developing a local food and beverages strategy to assist local growers and produces develop their products and get them to market,” the spokesperson said. – The National Farmers Union in New Brunswick said in a statement on Thursday that they would like to see Coon’s bill passed. – “Food is one thing that all New Brunswickers require on a daily basis and food security is an issue that affects and unites all people,” the group said in a statement. – }

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This was retweeted again, and it’s worth re -publishing. Who benefits from a bill Stephen Harper is trying to say is good for everybody? Only the rich- —djo—

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{ We’re taking it slow for now, after being ‘down for the count’ / ‘under the weather’ / being beaten up by flu bugs for the last several weeks. Who knows? We might wake up tomorrow full of vim and vinegar and want to dive right back into what we were doing up to near the end of last month. But right now, I don’t even want to think about a lot of the nonsense that is passing for ‘News’ lately. — Quote Paul Simon? “I get all the news I need from the weather report.” (?) But anyway, we could probably supply you with a barrage of retweeted stuff: Yay? Note to the world: “Hang in there-” —djo— }

Yay! I found something Positive! & I’ve wanted to hear anything good about Apple since it’s been looking like they’ve embraced the same sleazy-iced ‘Make sure they can’t use last years peripherals with this year’s ‘gotta-have-its’ greedy ice-hole marketing strategy. Grumble Grumble…

“How US Companies try to avoid paying taxes?” or how they get away with that?

“Smart TeeVees = Bad News” —djo—

Without a whole lot more details I have no idea what this is or whether or not it might be appropriate for children. Best Guess? : Cover Photo of National Geographic Kids Magazine.

Coming from Lockheed Martin – I wouldn’t trust this as far as I could throw one of those towers. ‘Smart Grids’ are buzz words for the greedy corporate ice-holes who are using your ‘smart appliances’ to spy on you. smart meters disturb sleep patterns and give utility companies the ability to monitor your use and shut you down at their slightest whim. Senior citizens were killed in Texas when a power company shut off their air conditioners during an incredible heat wave. 106 degrees F in a high rise = dead senior citizens + Zero Corporate responsibility. —djo—

Another weird juxtaposition coming our way from the ‘Tweet-Us-Sphere’ —jim w—

And, while we’re on the subject of the ‘Surveillance State’ – is this a legitimate view of what is going on? Or is this a stunt to try to recruit the kind of security cops who don’t mind getting their hands inside babies’ diapers and strip searching beautiful young women? Gack! —djo—

A person who works at ‘Corrections Canada’ told me I was an effing idiot if I believed the ‘b.s.’ that Texas would lock anyone up for life if they were caught with a single marijuana cigarette. The next time I saw the guy he looked stunned, like he had researched that in order to try to slap me in the face with the ‘truth’ – and found out I had told him the truth. But he never apologized. Arizona is almost as bad as Texas. —jim w—

& The previous ‘government’/regime – here in New Brunswick may have made some dirty deals, but those deals may not be chiselled in stone. —jim w—

My Map of Twitter Followers? —jim w—

Tweet Map – Not as pretty as Jim’s, but at least you can read it. —djo—

Dueling Twitter Maps? Nah- But These are my ‘newer followers’ & I’m not in this to see how many followers I can get. Neither is Doug. —jim w—

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8:40 pm – I got here late and have received a barrage of “#shutdowncanada” tweets. I want to look into this before we publish. — both of us broke for dinner a while back so we haven’t been killing ourselves here, but… — —jim w—

{ There were quite a few demonstrations in Montreal and maybe elsewhere, people disrupted traffic with signs I’ll translate to “you can stick your austerity measures where we hope it hurts you a lot.” And the feeling is ‘we’re not going to take this [ bull chips ] any more. But now it’s after 9 pm and we’ve been at this at least twice as long as we wanted to be- Time for somebody else to jump in and save their little corner of this world. okay? —jim w— }

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{ & Doug has added a catch all blog to our madness here, and we will probably be posting our daily stuff there too, at http://www.aerendel.org/CanadianNews/ It’s on one of our servers and he managed to put in a twitter feed and connected his sadly neglected effbook account so anyone friending the right Doug Otterson on facebook should get lots of interesting retweets etc. Busman’s Holidays are Us? —jim w— }

— Today is my cousin, Kathy Conroy’s Birthday. A couple other people I know also have birthdays tody. —Jim W—

Kathy Kelly will begin a 3 month prison sentence tomorrow, January 23rd, at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. She said that 90% of victims killed by drones are civilians and quotes a British organization, “Reprieve” which reports that for ever military targeted person taken out by a drone, 28 civilians are killed. —djo—

Sounds Good To Me – —djo—

{ Canada’s Conservative government is set to introduce expanded powers for surveillance agencies, likely for the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). – Speaking last week in Vancouver, Prime Minister Stephen Harper stated that the government is “looking at additional powers to make sure that our security agencies have the range of tools available,” apparently to address incidents like the shootings in Paris. However, judging by past policy patterns reaching the highest government levels, such new “powers” will likely be aimed at stifling and criminalizing voices of dissent, here are some reasons why. – Over recent years, the track record of Canada’s state surveillance agencies has been made clear through numerous access to information requests and public accounts, the record is that First Nations have been a prime target for government spying, whileenvironmentalist and social justice groups are also closely watched. – Throughout the Idle No More protests both CSIS and the RCMP, working in concert, monitored closely the community protests for treaty rights, actions that inspired manyIndigenous youth to vocalize publicly the apartheid realities facing First Nations people. – Conservative politicians refused to ever fully recognize the voices and demands of Indigenous people on the streets during Idle No More, like the Nishiyuu Walkers, instead turning shadowy government agents on the first peoples of these lands. By extension, all other major Canadian political parties, both the Liberals and the NDP, have failed to denounce clearly, the sustained spying by CSIS and the RCMP on First Nations communities. – Within the context of the “additional powers” that Harper is publicly indicating will be given to spy agencies in the coming period, the likely reality is that additional attention from CSIS will be focused on First Nations peoples protesting for human and land rights in Canada. – On CSEC, Canada’s digital surveillance agency, likely involved in the same type of mass data collection practiced by the National Security Agency (NSA) south of the border, something never publicly disputed by CSEC, the new “powers” that Harper is speaking about will also most likely involve CSEC, an organization with tight operational links to the NSA. – Details made public by American whistleblower Edward Snowden, indicate that Canada’s CSEC maintains a “close co-operative relationship” with the NSA, a working collaboration that involves CSEC offering “resources for advanced collection, processing and analysis.” To date the Canadian government and by extension CSEC, has never confirmed or denied any of these details, in state security terms we know very well what that means. – Today, in the wake of the shootings in Paris, the Conservative government in Ottawa is working to exploit the deaths and by extension the larger neo-colonial political crisis in France, to expand the role of state surveillance agencies, like CSIS and CSEC, that define contemporary neo-liberal authoritarianism, a political orientation that is firmly rooted and extends from the colonial era. – Instead of embarking on a real political discussion on the ways that contemporary western systems of power are central to creating the conditions for “terrorism,” Harper is simply expanding the surveillance practices of neo-colonialism and by extension justifying war. – Harper’s comments in Vancouver on the Paris shootings, intentionally exploit the violence with the aim of legitimizing Canada’s role in the bombing of Iraq. “And they have declared war on any country like ourselves that values freedom, openness and tolerance,” stated Harper, “and we may not like this and wish it would go away, but it is not going to go away and the reality is we are going to have to confront it.” – In real terms this is a call from Harper for prolonged Canadian participation in war, the sustained bombing of Iraq, a military campaign purportedly aiming to save the Iraqi people from the Islamic State (ISIS) group by bombing their cities and towns. – Bombing people to save them, that was an argument made by the U.S. government during the war in Vietnam and again with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, both interventions that clearly has lead to sustained violence and human suffering, remember the Mỹ Lai massacre. How are more western bombs going to liberate Iraq, or Syria, from ISIS? – Most certainly Canada’s moves to join the ‘war’ against ISIS will lead to significant profits for Canada’s ever growing military industrial complex, while simply leading to more death and destruction in Iraq. In reality the entire bombing campaign in Iraq is rooted in violent colonial logic, the very same framework that is fueling the type of violence seen this past week in Paris, the people carrying out the shootings in France spoke about the images of US torture at Abu Ghraib prison and also the Israeli military occupation of Palestine as reasons of the attacks. – Now clearly nothing justifies the killing of cartoonists, or civilians in a supermarket in Paris, but we can’t continue to ignore that western colonialism, past and present, is creating the context for such violent incidents to continue. In a cycle of violence, rooted in colonialism, those holding the monopoly of military power, the U.S., France and Canada, clearly have the greater ability and responsibility to stop the cycle and create real conditions for a just peace. – Instead of examining in truth the roots of the violence, Canada’s Conservative government is simply abusing the memories of all those who died in France, by using the shootings to justify the entrenchment of a surveillance state and to cheerlead neo-colonial military policies abroad. – Stefan Christoff is a writer, community organizer and musician living in Montreal who contributes to rabble.ca find Stefan @spirodon – Image: “Strength in the Face of Fighter Jets” by Nidal Elkhairy }

{ New Stuff Every Day: We don’t change the images with the twitter stuff every day, but there will almost always be something new there, usually at the top of each section.The red headlines under ‘read this:’ & ‘Not this:’ Will be new. The top 4 headlines in blue “Offbeat” will usually be new.The top ten headlines in maroon/brown under “Most Viewed” are almost always all new, with CBC repeating or rewording something every now and then. Some of the green healines under “Other” are new, the ones at the top of the list are the most new.The top 4 purple headlines under “Local / New Brunswick” are New, except when some of those top 4 are repeated over the weekend or a holiday.And several of the top olive green headlines under “First Nations” are new on most days. — thanks, —djo— }

Nice Message —jim w—

{ +10,709 New tweets since 9 pm Monday – & It just might be National “Something or Other Day”, but nobody tells me these things – —djo— }

{ Headlines missing from below: —> Harper’s trying to look like a hero by claiming he is giving families a big tax break. Nope, he’s giving millionaires’ families a big tax break. ‘Normal people’ are carrying the richest ice-holes’ weight. Why do white cops shoot young black men? * Link * Interesting twist on New Brunswick’s moratorium on Fracking : At the top of the list of what would have to change before the new Premier of N.B. would allow fracking and pre-fracking ‘explorations’ would be “Social License” which, he explained, would mean that the citizens of New Brunswick would have to be in favor of that fracking. = “Hmmmm” – * UBER software raised prices during Australian Hostage Crisis to $140-$200 dollars per ride. Then apologized and offered repayments. — & Loads of people anonymously did nice things for people they never met & Media completely missed that. * —djo— }

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{ We’ve tried to move all the New stuff up top here. There may be important and interesting stuff below: Bears, Belugas and Cats may be more important than the corporate ‘bull chips’ in the news to many of our readers, but we tried to give the current newsy stuff priority. }

Canada In Winter. A poem. This may be a little hard to read. —djo—

Monopoly – Version 2015.1 ? —djo— Somebody told me that ‘trutherbot’ is a holocaust denier. I don’t know. I guess I’ll have to check that out. —djo—

===Read This:

Lead Articles: Today’s Theme?: “Tell me something Positive!”

“Snowy owl ‘epidemic’ sweeps across Ontario.

I think the Saudi Arabian king, maybe this one’s predecessor, gave a contingent of U.S. troops a flock of sheep and suggested the U.S. military personal could use the sheep to relieve their sexual tension instead of trying to shame any Saudi Arabian women while stationed there. ;

Radicalization and the ‘Prison Industrial Complex’. I think I read somewhere within the last couple months that it costs more to send one person to prison for a year than it does to send 4 people through a University degree program for 4 years. Radicalization? Either you become addicted to the ‘toys’ the power crazy let you play with, or you see through their ‘stuff’. If you see through their ‘bull chips’ they will label you a radical. The Soviet Union would have labeled you insane and locked you away in an insane asylum indefinitely. We’re not at that stage, yet. ;

Maclean’s magazine called Winnipeg the most racist city in Canada? From what I’ve read most of the racist anger is aimed at First Nations people. In the U.S.A. we call ‘First Nations people’ ‘Native Americans’ ;

Could you live in a 186 square foot home? I think that’s bigger than a jail cell. ;

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Politicians paying somebody to wipe out evidence of overspending? They do more than that, GOTO: CAFR1.Com ;

& – Wouldn’t it be nice if people started living by “Love they Neighbor as thyself”- ‘Could you believe it-? no more war—‘ –

There’s a link directly above this section in the caption of a copied and pasted re-tweet defining a global economic flying ‘shitstorm’ – The ‘bad guys’ are plotting to manipulate an economic collapse in order to tighten their grip on everyone and take away what remaining freedoms you believe you still have. One encouraging forecast I heard: There are a lot more of ‘US’ than there are of ‘Them’ – ‘Them = Banksters’ and people will not take this. We might have a rough go for a while, but we will shut those Banksters down and change the way we view economic matters. Let’s hope that forecast was right and lets pray for all the help we need to get through this with ‘ease and grace’ [ —djo— ];

The Keystone pipeline. Um, (1) Big oil companies have ‘buried’ patents for processes that could make competitive technologies viable. (2) Nicola Tesla knew about and was working on methods to distribute electricity free to everybody and the rich and powerful ruined him financially because he was a threat to their monopolies. (3) There’s a book that might be available somewhere, “The Energy Non-Crisis” by Lindsey Williams, a Baptist Pastor who was privileged to insider information and learned that oil keeps replentishing itself, Oil Companies have raised their prices based on lies and are still making record profits. Farmers in Texas discovered new oil on their property, thought they would be rich, signed deals with big oil companies had their wells dug and were told that the oil companies were not going to use their oil, no matter how good it was and they couldn’t tell the world about this because, according to the terms of their contracts, the big oil companies could sue them for everything they were worth if they did. Big Oil is dirty business. Oil-Sands / Tar-Sands is dirty business. Send them buggers to the poor house, or banish them to a parallel dimension where their kind of policies have ruined whole planets and let them starve and freeze with what they’ve done staring them in their faces. ;

Housing costs everywhere in the world are controlled by greedy ice-holes. Until we fix that problem by removing those greedy ice-holes from the equation, be prepared to be hammered in the brain by silly propaganda designed to keep you off balance and in a state of anxiety about everything in your environment. Pray for Angelic Intervention. Bring Heaven to Earth. “Help! – Amen” ;

All kids need a place to play where they can act out their dreams and even mimic the grown up ice-holes they see every day. I’ll include University aged men and women in this. There should be someplace where almost-grown-up kids can be complete ice-holes for a laugh, as long as they don’t hurt anybody. Maybe universities need in-house computer bulletin boards where students can post all kinds of inflamatory b.s. and nobody outside their little group will ever see it. Faculty could probably use something like that, too. A Private Venting Board where you can call your dean ‘a complete freakin’ waste of good dna’ and get away with it. We never would have heard about Lieutenant Dish if rabid political correctness was in force when M.A.S.H. first entered our collective, -clear throat- uh- ‘consciousness’ (?) – ;

The problem with big oil began with the fact that they’ve been lying to all of us all along. Oil is created by some natural process inside the earth and on distant planets and moons that never had dinosaurs. It is not ‘fossil fuel’. It constantly replentishes itself. There never was or will be an oil shortage. Prices you pay are inflated by lies. What we need here is cheap renewable energy, which the sun and planet provide for free. Put them lying cheating manipulating Oil Barons in the poor house. Or better yet, put them in Jail – Or teleport them to a barren parallel dimension where the previous crop of greedy, lying, cheating ice-holes made their planet almost un-liveable. ;

Trial by mass media does not make anyone guilty. There is due process. Celebrities should not be put on trial in the corporate media before they have been found guilty in a court of law. And think about this: How many people who have been convicted of really heinous crimes have been exonerated by dna evidence in the last few years. Our ‘Justice’ systems are imperfect and subject to corruption and mistakes made by honest people. You better hope you never have to bet your life on your country’s ‘Justice’ system. ;

Oilsands, Tarsands. The technology is out there to provide everybody on this planet with free energy. WE can and should make sure that everybody on this planet has a safe shelter and enough to eat. We can do that. We should have been doing that all along. There is no such thing as ‘Fossil Fuel’. But YES! Canada should leave its oilsands in the ground, where it belongs. ;

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If you really want to see all of today’s CBC headlines go to their website, listed as a link below this line:

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Updat

White Deer? We were accused of trying to pass a goat off as a deer in New Brunswick. *** Our deer friends are back and happy that we’ve got a nice big bag of oats to share with them for Yuletide celebrations. Not a single one of them was wearing a Santa Claus Hat or wearing jingle bells. That is probably a good thing. *** —jim w— *** UPDATE We thought we saw a news story that reported that the white deer in this photo had been killed by a bus up the street. Nope. Tonight she was one of several deer who showed up to thank us for the oats we give them.

“Offbeat”

Husky reunited with her human.

“Deer on Ice Rescued” – This seems more like “Human Decency” than ‘offbeat’.

Photo with Irish president expands Kevin Vickers’s Twitter stature { * Kevin Vickers is the Canadian Parliament’s Master at Arms who shot and killed an armed attacker inside the Parliament building after the alleged shooter shot and killed a guard of honor at a Canadian monument last autumn. * —djo— }

===Recently: >>—>

Pocket dials make up over half of 911 calls to OPP detachment { Accidental dialing made up more like 90% of the 911 calls to one detachment of the Ontario Provincial Police }

‘Ship glitter to your enemies’ makes a hard-to-clean mess for people you hate { * & If you believe you have a right to hate anybody you better ship twice as much to yourself. * —djo— }

Back to the Future lives on in Ontario man’s driveway { * Somebody spent 12 years researching and building an authentic replica of the time traveling Delorean with all the parts that were in the movies. * —djo— }

Son pays off parents’ mortgage for Christmas { * & The money used to ‘bail out’ the ‘Too big to fail’ Banksters could have paid off everybody’s Mortgages several years ago. The human race survived on this planet for seven and a half million years without banks trying to control us. “Banking Establishments are more dangerous than standing armies!” -Thomas Jefferson. Burn down the banks. Tar and feather anybody who voted for that bail-out. * —djo— }

Labrador hoisted to safety after falling 46 metres off cliff { The dog got spooked but survived, with ‘minor injuries but walked out to the trailhead’ after a climber rappelled to a narrow ledge with a rescue harness and both dog and climber were hoisted to safety by an 8-person crew from the Oregon Humane Society. This shouldn’t be ‘Offbeat’- This should be the kind of good news we need a lot more of. 🙂 —djo— }

Students develop app that rewards you for ignoring your phone in social situations { }

Swedish town seeks to prevent torching of giant Christmas straw goat { * It’s a tradition in the town of Gävle, every Christmas they build a 13 meter tall straw goat and about 50% of the time vandals burn it down. * Link to WebCam * At least in my browser, there was a ‘click here to translate this page’ thing visible for a couple seconds. Jim W has some distant relatives somewhere in Sweden – —djo— }

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New Electric Vehicle at a charging station

“Most Viewed”

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah dies { }

Isabella Mori lives in ‘tiny home’ in North Vancouver { }

Maclean’s claim that Winnipeg is Canada’s most racist city upsets mayor { }

Target’s package for ex-CEO matches package for all 17,600 Canadian workers { * –Social media readers had some snarky comments Thursday about reports that the former CEO of Target got a total severance and other benefits package worth about the same as the total amount being offered to all 17,600 of the chain’s Canadian employees who will soon be out of work as the company winds down its presence in Canada. – Target’s “employee trust” package for its Canadian workers, announced last week, amounts to $70 million ($56 million US). It’s designed to provide each worker with 16 weeks of pay.

– Depending on who’s doing the calculation, the golden handshake handed to ex-CEO Gregg Steinhafel last May is in roughly in the same ballpark. – Fortune Magazine put the value of his total “walk-away” package, including stock options and other benefits, at $61 million US, including severance of $15.9 million. – “I’m not normally one to jump on the anti-corporate bandwagon, but these numbers really put things in perspective,” wrote Reddit user leafsfan_89 on a busy Reddit chat page. – “My next gig is to become a CEO of a company, fail miserably and collect millions,” a Twitter user named Tim Parent tweeted Thursday morning. – The reference is to Steinhafel’s tenure at the helm of the troubled retailer. A year ago, Target suffered a massive data breach affecting 70 million U.S. customers. – Target’s ill-fated expansion into Canada also cost the company billions of dollars, prompting the new CEO and board to cut their losses and shutter all of the retailer’s 133 Canadian locations. – CEOs of major corporations are compensated at rates that are often hundreds of times higher than their rank-and-file employees. Last year, an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute showed that the top U.S. CEOs made 296 times more than the wage of an average worker in their industry. – A report earlier this month by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives found that Canada’s top-paid CEOs saw their compensation climb at double the rate of the average Canadian between the depths of the recession and 2013. – Billions owed to creditors – In a separate development, the depth of Target Canada’s debts has also been revealed. – Alvarez & Marsal Canada, the court-appointed monitor handling Target Canada’s creditor protection and insolvency, has filed papers that show the retailer has total liabilities of $5.1 billion, including accounts payable of about $546 million. – The monitor has listed 42 pages of creditors that Target Canada owes money to. – The amounts include $12,036,000 to the Canada Revenue Agency, $8,372,000 to the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, $2,674,000 to the province of British Columbia, and smaller amounts to hundreds of other creditors. – * —djo— }

-10 photo slide show- Sundance 2015: the Canadian love-in at the infulential U.S. film festival { }

-Blog- Bacon is not longer a ‘trendy’ food, survey reveals { }

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“I can’t breathe!”

Other:

To cut or not to cut? Canada’s big banks weigh lending for less { }

Patriots QB Tom Brady denies knowledge of deflated footballs { * – overheard one comment on this, “The government is plotting to put everyone deeper and deeper into some new form of slavery and people are going crazy over whether somebody let a little bit of air out of freakin footballs?” – * —djo— }

‘Crazy Indians Brotherhood’ dole kindness to Winnipeg’s homeless { * But they clawed back $1.1 Billion that should have gone to Veterans’ Health Care while systematically denying that health care to veterans in real need? This stuff has to stop * —djo— }

Why it’s impossible to storm-proof the power grid { * uh, would that be because the over-charging power companies don’t want to spend any part of their ‘profits’ to upgrade or use technology that Nicola Tesla developped almost a hundred years ago that could make power distribution free to everyone on this planet? * —djo— }

Cannabinoid e-cigarettes to be available in more countries in 2015 { }

-Analysis- Neil Macdonald: Can America handle the truth about Saudi Arabia? { * Me: Can America handle the truth about itself? Can America handle the truth about September 11, 2001 or anything the C.I.A. has been involved in since its inception? How about the NSA? How about the ‘dark ops’ projects paid for by taxpayer dollars, how about the lies that taxes are the only income the U.S. Government has to work with? How about a dozen other examples of ‘the putrid underbelly of the american society’? * —djo— }

Shale gas poll finds New Brunswickers divided on issue { * How did they phrase the questions on that poll? “Would you sell your children’s and grandchildren’s future out so a couple ice-hole politicians can strike it rich?” <— That’s the real question. There is no such thing as ‘Safe Fracking’. They do not have the technology to ensure that their band-aid ‘fixes’ can keep poisons and flammable gasses from leaking into your drinking water when their patches rust, crack or otherwise fail in a couple years. This is not a joke, this is life and death. * —djo— }

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“First Nations”

Last June 26th, The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in favor of the Tsilhqot’in First Nation of B.C. granting it title over 438,000 hectares of land, the long ignored tribe became a priority for the B.C. government, CBC says this was a major ‘Game-Changer’. —djo—

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Lots of Pollution, Lots of Oil Company Profits, The Promised “Lots of Jobs” is a pile of bull chips. —djo—

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{ “Fude 4 Thought” : }

“As long as the fish still swim – This Land will be – Indian!” I want to cry every time I hear Richie Havens sing that song. And I play it a lot. —djo—

The building behind the sculpture is almost as amazing as the sculpture itself. I wonder if anybody lives in that building. —djo—

I think I want to raise Benjamin Franklin’s ghost, give him a really nasty weapon and tell him where to find everybody who is trying to kill the postal service in Canada and anywhere else on this planet. —djo—

Dang- The tweets are good today. This one is from fr0g5. Retweeted from @LawAbidingHuman —djo—

The only thing I really know about this person is that she has some very interesting tweets. —djo—

The Spirit of Fox News in a [Wing-] Nutshell? —djo—

“Would you like to swing on a star? Carry moonbeams home in a jar? And be better off than you are?” -Or would you rather go to school? —djo—

Just when I thought we might be able to tidy this place up, somebody has to go and send me stuff like this – Stop Monsanto before they stop us. What they’re doing is beyond ‘Cruel and Unusual’ but I would say, stop short of butchering the families of everybody who works for those Ice-Holes. There has to be a Humane way to deal with them. —djo—

” Danny Metatawabin, Brian Okimas and Paul Mettina walked 1,700 kilometers to Ottawa to raise awareness of treaty rights and encourage the federal government and their chiefs to work together to address and reconcile aboriginal issues.” —djo—

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{ This is from the ‘Tweet-Us-Sphere’ : }

“At a low point in the 1990’s I started writing a story in which the Earth/Dimension we know and love split in two with most of the trees, bees and plants that give us food and shelter and oxygen, as well as the domestic and farm animals walked into perenial springtime and brought positive people with them, the nasties, the power crazy, the negative people all fell into a separate dimension/parallel world that immediately became a nuclear winter.” —jim w—

Malcolm X was murdered because he believed that the races could get along co-exist and co-prosper. Bad guys did not like that idea. They want to Divide & Conquer. —djo—

{ “Stephen Lewis roars once more in takedown of the Harper government: Newspaper Article from the Toronto Star: * Link * }

& Don’t forget Hong Kong

Palestinians show support for Ferguson, Missouri.

================

-Julian Assange’s Whistleblower Foundation has new members- Whistleblowers in general are peole who subscribe to higher standards of ethics and morality than their bosses or supervisors or government authoritarian types and are usually shocked to find out that lots of people do not back them up when they seek help because they’ve reported an injustice, or worse- and been ‘rewarded by being fired or even charged with crimes against corporations that the ‘justice system’, instead of locking up the bad guys, turns out to be protecting from the good guys, Constables got their start as enforcers for corrupt officials, corrupt ‘Nobles’ and ‘Royals’. When ‘serve and protect becomes law enforcement- that’s bad news for everybody. —djo—

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* Walter Burien’s Web site explains how governments all over the ‘free world’ are stealing from their citizens and ‘cooking their books’ : * link to CAFR1.com *

{ * Attention OathKeepers: When “Serve and Protect” becomes strict “Law Enforcement” with the civilian population seen as the enemy, Police become Terrorists. * Link to article in the Toronto Star * —djo— }

{ * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtzIKCqaZMQ * <——<< * Link * Moody Blues @ Home in 1995? from “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” I like many of the interesting details of Justin Hayward’s ‘Carriage House’ Home. —jim w— }

{ “America- Where are ya now? Don’t you care about your sons and daughters? Don’t ya know We need you now, We can’t fight alone against this monster-” -John Kay of Steppenwolf- & the Monster is the one who convinces the police that they need to arrest a harmless 90 year old man for feeding the homeless in Florida and scares honest police officers to the point where they’re killing unarmed/ harmless men and women. These Police Officers are Not the Enemy. Look Behind the Curtain. —djo— }

{ From @democracynow “We can reduce the prison population by 50% in the next 6-7 years if we just demand greater justice” * Link * the link might be more interesting than the above quote. —djo— }

Most recently, Mozilla and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) announced “Let’s Encrypt,” their collaboration with Cisco, Akamai, IdenTrust, and researchers at the University of Michigan in attempt to take the first big step towards a more universally secure Internet. One of the biggest weaknesses in the underlying architecture of the web as it exists currently is the highly bureaucratic and complex (not to mention costly) system required for websites to obtain and deploy the SSL/TSL certificates needed to protect your web surfing experience (these are the basic pieces of information that allow the little lock icon to work in your browser, signaling your session is private and secure). “Let’s Encrypt” will extend these digital certificates to all websites by starting an easy-to-use and free-of-charge certificate authority that issues them; this means that web encryption will not just be available to big players like banking services or email providers, but will set a much higher bar for Internet security across all websites, regardless of their ability to pay for a certificate or properly install it.

We are strong, adamant supporters of this initiative and are excitedly awaiting it’s unveiling in 2015 under a new nonprofit called the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG).

In addition to this, Mozilla announced it’s own strategic privacy initiative in collaboration the Tor Project and CDT. We’ll be consulting “on privacy technology, open standards, and future product collaborations” with the open-source browser to help it more effectively and appropriately bring privacy features into its products. “We want to accelerate pragmatic and user-focused advances in privacy technology for the Web, giving users more control, awareness and protection in their Web experiences,” the company explained via its privacy blog. – We believe in the possibilities that privacy innovations could make possible, and are excited and honored to be a part of the process. – What do these changes mean for the short- and long- term future of the security of the Internet? – There will soon be no excuses for not baking encryption into web services, and in turn, consumer privacy and protection into the tools we use to navigate the digital highway.

– “Our ultimate aim is for human rights defenders, journalists and civil society groups to be able to carry out their legitimate work without fear of surveillance, harassment, intimidation, arrest or torture,” Amnesty International said in an online posting introducing Detekt. – Whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed the extent of government surveillance on activists and citizens. Amnesty said it is concerned about a chill on human rights activists and journalists, especially those in repressive countries, because of such surveillance.

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Microsoft fixes 19-year old Windows bug { * – Microsoft Corp issued patches on Tuesday to fix a bug in its Windows operating system that remained undiscovered for 19 years. – The bug, which is present in every version of Microsoft Windows from Windows 95 onward, allows an attacker to remotely take over and control a computer.

– IBM Corp’s cybersecurity research team discovered the bug in May, describing it as a “significant vulnerability” in the operating system. – “The buggy code is at least 19 years old and has been remotely exploitable for the past 18 years,” IBM X-Force research team said in its blog on Tuesday. – *

*** The bugs were not “undiscovered”, Government Hackers spoke about this on Coast to Coast A.M. before the summer of 2002. Art Bell was the host. This program is not listed in the current Coast to Coast A.M. archives, at least I could not find it by searching ‘hackers’. 3 men who were quite ‘enthusiastic’ and talkative about their experience working for hackers for US Government agencies that ‘officially do not exist’ -one of them told us he has an ashtray with one of those officially non-existent agency’s official logo on it- told us that microsoft was fully aware of holes in their operating system but were not going to do anything about it because the government of the US liked it the way it was. They said it was simple for any hacker to get into your computer if you were ‘running windows’ -“Especially if you have printer sharing turned on.” && They also said they liked Apple Computers back then because it was possible to tell a Mac to do only one thing at a time, not like windows computers which could have all sorts of nonsense going on undetected in the background. – AND Another Coast to Coast A.M. guest, much more recently, related talking to a computer pioneer a long time ago, when dial ups were the latest thing, and when the computer guy finished showing him something, he would not leave the room without shutting off his computer, and disconnecting the phone line from his computer. When the C2C guest asked the computer guy what that was all about, the computer guy said that he, as in insider, knew that the US Government could already get into anyone’s computer that was connected to Delphi or GEnie or AOL, even if the computer had been turned off. — And, now that almost every computer in the world has WiFi capabilities- you can never fully disconnect yourself from the possibility that they can turn your computer on and gather any information you have, or were ever connected to- any time they want to do that- With the possible exception that you might be ‘safe’ if you live inside a Faraday cage, a hundred feet or more beneath the surface of this planet. Welcome to the future, it sucks. —jim w— }

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-Archived?:-

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New counterterrorism bill to override certain privacy limits { * You, who voted the real terrorists into power in your own governments, now get to reap what you sewed. * —djo— }

Charlie Hebdo shooting: France arrests 54 as al-Qaeda in Yemen claims responsibility { * Black ops organizations created al-Qaeda. Mean people created the atmosphere in which vulnerable people were pushed into desperation and became recruited by ‘terrorist groups’. Politicians around the world are making out like bandits, grabbing power and taking away privacy and personal liberties. This will keep on happening and getting worse all the time until we do something about it. I don’t mean you should go out and buy a gun and shoot all politicians. We need a basic attitude change. Stop believing any information you get from the main stream media. We need governments that are not looking at us as their enemies. How do we fix this? Pray for guidance. * —djo— }

– A federal agency banned public employees from accessing news stories at Blacklock’sReporter via government internet servers, documents confirm. Confidential records show Shared Services Canada imposed the government-wide blackout on website access by hundreds of thousands of staff. Files on the blacklisting were obtained through Access To Information. – Shared Services Canada offered no explanation. A 218-page file detailing the ban is heavily censored and conceals email messages in which Shared Services staff discuss the action in messages headed, “Block Domain: Blacklocks.ca”. – “This is outrageous conduct,” said Blacklock’s publisher Holly Doan, who noted the newsroom first learned of the blacklisting from individual subscribers in federal departments who were unable to access news content. Shared Services Canada manages telecom services for 43 departments. – No reason is given for the blacklisting. Blacklock’s is an accredited member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery covering bills, regulations, Access to Information and federal courts. – “It’s astonishing to see Canada join the short list of countries that forbid public employees from accessing internet news sites,” Doan said. “This is not only Orwellian, it appears to breach the government’s own guidelines on workplace internet use.” – Cabinet’s official Policy On Acceptable Network & Device Use adopted in 2013 permits federal employees to “search for information online” and “share links to professional activities and events or interesting and relevant articles”. The Policy also details “unacceptable use” of government computers including access to “hate propaganda”; “pornography”; “obscenity”; and “illegal gambling”. – Doan said, “Surely Shared Services Canada can tell the difference between Blacklock’s and a jihadist website or crime syndicate”; “No rational agency would blacklist an accredited news site in the name of security or crime prevention”. Doan noted the Blacklock’s ban appeared to be revoked September 9, the same day the publication filed a formal request for records from Shared Services Canada. – ‘Way Ahead There, Boss Man’ – Documents indicate the government’s central internet provider blocks numerous domain sites. Shared Services Canada would not explain how many sites it has blacklisted, what their names are, or how many others are accredited news sites. “We do not comment on the specifics of methods used to protect the Government of Canada’s IT infrastructure,” said Marie-Helene Rouillard, a Shared Services spokesperson. – Access To Information records show the department’s IT security division blocked the website blacklocks.ca from last August 22, sending an email alert to numerous agencies including the Department of Industry, Correctional Service of Canada, tax department and others. “The email went to all contacts we have on record,” Dave Tough, a Shared Services security analyst, writes in one August 25 email; “Way ahead of you there, boss-man.” – Tough rated the alert of “high importance”, and indicated several IT staff monitored the news site. Blacklock’s was also cited in an August 27 Cyber Brief distributed to telecom staff across all government agencies; “Cyber Briefs are publications released by the Government of Canada with the goal of preventing widespread incidents,” the memo reads. All references to Blacklock’s were lengthy and censored. – Tough did not reply to repeated requests for an interview. “At no time did our newsroom pose a security threat to the nation,” said Publisher Doan. – Under cabinet’s Policy on workplace computer use, more than 200,000 federal employees are permitted to “watch online broadcasts of work-related content” and “keep up-to-date with news and current events”, according to Examples Of Acceptable Use. Other permitted activities include “subscribe to web feeds”; “check the weather forecast”; “confirm bus schedule information”; “read or contribute to online forums”; and “visit social networking sites to connect with family and friends”. – Forbidden computer activities include using workplace computers to “make public comments about government policies”; “engage in political activity”; or “breach the duty of loyalty requirement for public servants”. –

Apprenticeship ad’s claim of skilled trades shortfall open to question { * And the current sitting government of Canada has been accused of lying in these ads as well as using taxpayer dollars to fund the ads which are thinly veiled campaign ‘bull chips’ to try to keep themselves in power while they fleece the country- Steal 1.1 Billion dollars from Veterans’ healt care and give it back to try to brag about saving money while denying health care to Vets, discharging Vets months before they would be elligible for their pensions, closing down 9 regional offices where veterans used to be able to get help with their health claims- and then spending hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money on lying television ads about the economy? Gag me with a spoon? * —djo— }

-Special Report- Would you know what to do if someone told you they were raped? { * Link * } }

-Analysis- Gobal corruption a bigger scourge than terrorism: Brian Stewart { * Link to the CBC article. * *** And The whole idea behind our ‘modern’ system of ‘banking’ is probably the most corrupt ‘system’ in this world. *** —djo— }

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{ My friends in the U.S. tell me I’m lucky to be in Canada. They are usually correct. —jim w— }

{ Thursday, 22 January, 2015 -( +12°F / -11°C & clear at 11:11 am in Ithaca )- This is a very late Abridged Version – I’ve been sick with the flu and Jim in New Brunswick was down with a different virus at the same time. —jda— is ‘up to his eyebulbs with work schnarr’- —djo— }

{ Saturday, 17 January, 2015: We were chatting about putting out our usual news & headlines page yesterday when a friend retweeted the above. Clif at Half Past Human dot com has been mining strategic word changes on the internet and became very good at deciphering coming events that our ‘collective unconscious’ is aware of. And then he was able to narrow trends down and figure out when and where a lot of things that were probably coming would happen. Here he said that among his latest findings he sees the “last bankster is strangled w/guts of last priest/pope/imam/rabbi, then humans will be free! Probably by 2019 when [vatican burns]!” This sounds like he believes that organized religion has been holding us down. We have heard from other ‘seers’ that ‘the age of Aquarius’ will free us from the propaganda and mind control of the age of Pisces. These seers believe that the age of Pisces has either been gasping its last breaths or we’ve been in the transition period. — Remote viewer, Major Ed Dames who taught ‘scientific’ remote viewing to U.S. Armed services personnel. Major Dames does not claim to be the best at seeing the future, but he is convinced that we are heading into what he calls the ‘Mad Max Scenario’ in which our economies will be brought down and political infrastructure will fail. And he believes that will happen this year/ is already happening. Major Ed Dames believes a ruthless group of mind controling humans born on earth here will be seizing control and that will be the end of the ‘beautiful experiment in free will and liberty that was the United States of America’. — We have opposing views here. Some believe our world is falling apart, others believe it is coming together. Some believe that the “Banksters” and “Elitists” and the “Dark Ops Illuminati” have been pulling our strings, manipulating us and controlling everything from behind the scenes forever. They believe that these bad guys have created organized religion and warped the messages of all legitimate prophets who have tried to warn us about their schemes. They believe, for instance, that Paul, who became really active in forming the Christian Church was actually a Roman propagandist, who Christ called a ‘False Prophet’ who was canonized, not by Jesus and His followers, but by a conspiracy of those who had political power in Rome and wanted to maintain it. They warped Christ’s message, which was that all of us could become fully awake and powerful sons and daughters of God- into ‘You need to follow the church- you can only find salvation through the church, you have to do things our way and do what we tell you to do or you will burn in hell for all of eternity.’ From “Love and do as thou wilt” to “Kill for God and Country”. From “Consider the lilies of the fields-” The Father provides for them, are You not more than they are? to “Whosoever shall not work, shall not eat,” et cetera. Focus on fear instead of Divine Inspiration. Looks like the time when we will see a huge clash between the forces of Light and Darkness may be closer than we thought. Be ready. Pray for Guidance. Pray for Angelic intervention. Pray we make it through this. —djo— }

& Dr Turi sent out an S.O.S. to the world message saying that -(1)- on January 20/21/22 there would be an earthquake above 6.0 somewhere; -(2)- on February 1/2/3 there would be another earthquake somewhere above 6.0; and -(3)- on February 10/11/12 there would be terrorist / police news. We have no idea how close any of this might hit, if it happens, and Dr Turi isn’t always the easiest guy to listen to or believe, but we thought it might be important enough to make a note of his worrying prophecies here.

Sounds Good To Me – —djo—

*** A ‘Native American Zodiac’ – I never considered that there might be such a thing, but we were trying to come up with som kind of calendar for our game world, which, as far as I know is still in production, if not exactly on the front burner right now.- This is intriguing. *** —jim w—

{ Canada’s Conservative government is set to introduce expanded powers for surveillance agencies, likely for the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). – Speaking last week in Vancouver, Prime Minister Stephen Harper stated that the government is “looking at additional powers to make sure that our security agencies have the range of tools available,” apparently to address incidents like the shootings in Paris. However, judging by past policy patterns reaching the highest government levels, such new “powers” will likely be aimed at stifling and criminalizing voices of dissent, here are some reasons why. – Over recent years, the track record of Canada’s state surveillance agencies has been made clear through numerous access to information requests and public accounts, the record is that First Nations have been a prime target for government spying, whileenvironmentalist and social justice groups are also closely watched. – Throughout the Idle No More protests both CSIS and the RCMP, working in concert, monitored closely the community protests for treaty rights, actions that inspired manyIndigenous youth to vocalize publicly the apartheid realities facing First Nations people. – Conservative politicians refused to ever fully recognize the voices and demands of Indigenous people on the streets during Idle No More, like the Nishiyuu Walkers, instead turning shadowy government agents on the first peoples of these lands. By extension, all other major Canadian political parties, both the Liberals and the NDP, have failed to denounce clearly, the sustained spying by CSIS and the RCMP on First Nations communities. – Within the context of the “additional powers” that Harper is publicly indicating will be given to spy agencies in the coming period, the likely reality is that additional attention from CSIS will be focused on First Nations peoples protesting for human and land rights in Canada. – On CSEC, Canada’s digital surveillance agency, likely involved in the same type of mass data collection practiced by the National Security Agency (NSA) south of the border, something never publicly disputed by CSEC, the new “powers” that Harper is speaking about will also most likely involve CSEC, an organization with tight operational links to the NSA. – Details made public by American whistleblower Edward Snowden, indicate that Canada’s CSEC maintains a “close co-operative relationship” with the NSA, a working collaboration that involves CSEC offering “resources for advanced collection, processing and analysis.” To date the Canadian government and by extension CSEC, has never confirmed or denied any of these details, in state security terms we know very well what that means. – Today, in the wake of the shootings in Paris, the Conservative government in Ottawa is working to exploit the deaths and by extension the larger neo-colonial political crisis in France, to expand the role of state surveillance agencies, like CSIS and CSEC, that define contemporary neo-liberal authoritarianism, a political orientation that is firmly rooted and extends from the colonial era. – Instead of embarking on a real political discussion on the ways that contemporary western systems of power are central to creating the conditions for “terrorism,” Harper is simply expanding the surveillance practices of neo-colonialism and by extension justifying war. – Harper’s comments in Vancouver on the Paris shootings, intentionally exploit the violence with the aim of legitimizing Canada’s role in the bombing of Iraq. “And they have declared war on any country like ourselves that values freedom, openness and tolerance,” stated Harper, “and we may not like this and wish it would go away, but it is not going to go away and the reality is we are going to have to confront it.” – In real terms this is a call from Harper for prolonged Canadian participation in war, the sustained bombing of Iraq, a military campaign purportedly aiming to save the Iraqi people from the Islamic State (ISIS) group by bombing their cities and towns. – Bombing people to save them, that was an argument made by the U.S. government during the war in Vietnam and again with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, both interventions that clearly has lead to sustained violence and human suffering, remember the Mỹ Lai massacre. How are more western bombs going to liberate Iraq, or Syria, from ISIS? – Most certainly Canada’s moves to join the ‘war’ against ISIS will lead to significant profits for Canada’s ever growing military industrial complex, while simply leading to more death and destruction in Iraq. In reality the entire bombing campaign in Iraq is rooted in violent colonial logic, the very same framework that is fueling the type of violence seen this past week in Paris, the people carrying out the shootings in France spoke about the images of US torture at Abu Ghraib prison and also the Israeli military occupation of Palestine as reasons of the attacks. – Now clearly nothing justifies the killing of cartoonists, or civilians in a supermarket in Paris, but we can’t continue to ignore that western colonialism, past and present, is creating the context for such violent incidents to continue. In a cycle of violence, rooted in colonialism, those holding the monopoly of military power, the U.S., France and Canada, clearly have the greater ability and responsibility to stop the cycle and create real conditions for a just peace. – Instead of examining in truth the roots of the violence, Canada’s Conservative government is simply abusing the memories of all those who died in France, by using the shootings to justify the entrenchment of a surveillance state and to cheerlead neo-colonial military policies abroad. – Stefan Christoff is a writer, community organizer and musician living in Montreal who contributes to rabble.ca find Stefan @spirodon – Image: “Strength in the Face of Fighter Jets” by Nidal Elkhairy }

Above: Drawings of children 5 to 6 years old exposed to less than one hour of television per day. Below: Drawings of children exposed to more than 3 hours of television per day. —djo—

C’est Bon! Et Je Suis —djo–

I’ll agree with this. Everybody deserves a free education. Shoot the idiots who are perpetrating the college debt program. —djo—

{ New Stuff Every Day: We don’t change the images with the twitter stuff every day, but there will almost always be something new there, usually at the top of each section.The red headlines under ‘read this:’ & ‘Not this:’ Will be new. The top 4 headlines in blue “Offbeat” will usually be new.The top ten headlines in maroon/brown under “Most Viewed” are almost always all new, with CBC repeating or rewording something every now and then. Some of the green healines under “Other” are new, the ones at the top of the list are the most new.The top 4 purple headlines under “Local / New Brunswick” are New, except when some of those top 4 are repeated over the weekend or a holiday.And several of the top olive green headlines under “First Nations” are new on most days. — thanks, —djo— }

Nice Message —jim w—

{ +7,351 New tweets since 11 am Saturday – & It just might be National “Something or Other Day”, but nobody tells me these things – —djo— }

{ Headlines missing from below: —> Harper’s trying to look like a hero by claiming he is giving families a big tax break. Nope, he’s giving millionaires’ families a big tax break. ‘Normal people’ are carrying the richest ice-holes’ weight. Why do white cops shoot young black men? * Link * Interesting twist on New Brunswick’s moratorium on Fracking : At the top of the list of what would have to change before the new Premier of N.B. would allow fracking and pre-fracking ‘explorations’ would be “Social License” which, he explained, would mean that the citizens of New Brunswick would have to be in favor of that fracking. = “Hmmmm” – * UBER software raised prices during Australian Hostage Crisis to $140-$200 dollars per ride. Then apologized and offered repayments. — & Loads of people anonymously did nice things for people they never met & Media completely missed that. * —djo— }

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{ We’ve tried to move all the New stuff up top here. There may be important and interesting stuff below: Bears, Belugas and Cats may be more important than the corporate ‘bull chips’ in the news to many of our readers, but we tried to give the current newsy stuff priority. Now we’re re-thinking everything.}

Wanting to keep the internet Free Should Never Make You a Criminal Suspect.

I remember hearing somebody say that anybody who calls a conservative a Nazi has run out of intelligent arguements. I do not believe that. —djo—

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Updat

White Deer? We were accused of trying to pass a goat off as a deer in New Brunswick. *** Our deer friends are back and happy that we’ve got a nice big bag of oats to share with them for Yuletide celebrations. Not a single one of them was wearing a Santa Claus Hat or wearing jingle bells. That is probably a good thing. *** —jim w— *** UPDATE We thought we saw a news story that reported that the white deer in this photo had been killed by a bus up the street. Nope. Tonight she was one of several deer who showed up to thank us for the oats we give them.

“Offbeat”

Husky reunited with her human.

“Deer on Ice Rescued” – This seems more like “Human Decency” than ‘offbeat’.

“Dawn of the Ducks”?

LED lights on a kayak paddle produced this effect. Yum 🙂 —djo—

Three Alaskans Save Avalanche – Trapped Moose. —djo—

Pocket dials make up over half of 911 calls to OPP detachment { Accidental dialing made up more like 90% of the 911 calls to one detachment of the Ontario Provincial Police }

‘Ship glitter to your enemies’ makes a hard-to-clean mess for people you hate { * & If you believe you have a right to hate anybody you better ship twice as much to yourself. * —djo— }

Manitoba woman comes within one Jets goal of becoming a millionaire { }

Back to the Future lives on in Ontario man’s driveway { * Somebody spent 12 years researching and building an authentic replica of the time traveling Delorean with all the parts that were in the movies. * —djo— }

Son pays off parents’ mortgage for Christmas { * & The money used to ‘bail out’ the ‘Too big to fail’ Banksters could have paid off everybody’s Mortgages several years ago. The human race survived on this planet for seven and a half million years without banks trying to control us. “Banking Establishments are more dangerous than standing armies!” -Thomas Jefferson. Burn down the banks. Tar and feather anybody who voted for that bail-out. * —djo— }

Labrador hoisted to safety after falling 46 metres off cliff { The dog got spooked but survived, with ‘minor injuries but walked out to the trailhead’ after a climber rappelled to a narrow ledge with a rescue harness and both dog and climber were hoisted to safety by an 8-person crew from the Oregon Humane Society. This shouldn’t be ‘Offbeat’- This should be the kind of good news we need a lot more of. 🙂 —djo— }

Students develop app that rewards you for ignoring your phone in social situations { }

Swedish town seeks to prevent torching of giant Christmas straw goat { * It’s a tradition in the town of Gävle, every Christmas they build a 13 meter tall straw goat and about 50% of the time vandals burn it down. * Link to WebCam * At least in my browser, there was a ‘click here to translate this page’ thing visible for a couple seconds. Jim W has some distant relatives somewhere in Sweden – —djo— }

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New Electric Vehicle at a charging station

“Most Viewed”

New counterterrorism bill to override certain privacy limits { * You, who voted the real terrorists into power in your own governments, now get to reap what you sewed. * —djo— }

3 ISIS recruits from Edmonton believed killed { }

Ashley Lynch terrorized after ‘swatting attack’ { * The B.C. woman believes she was targetted by malicious ‘pranksters’ after they hacked her private information from a twitter account of someone who had publicly criticized [the pranksters] and she had followed [the critic] Twitter. * —djo— }

GO bus crash on Highway 407 leaves 1 dead { }

Charlie Hebdo shooting: France arrests 54 as al-Qaeda in Yemen claims responsibility { * Black ops organizations created al-Qaeda. Mean people created the atmosphere in which vulnerable people were pushed into desperation and became recruited by ‘terrorist groups’. Politicians around the world are making out like bandits, grabbing power and taking away privacy and personal liberties. This will keep on happening and getting worse all the time until we do something about it. I don’t mean you should go out and buy a gun and shoot all politicians. We need a basic attitude change. Stop believing any information you get from the main stream media. We need governments that are not looking at us as their enemies. How do we fix this? Pray for guidance. * —djo— }

Vacation companies ‘pass the buck’ after honeymoon wrecked by hurricane { * Taking money and not delivering services or products paid for is fraud. Those companies would have to have insurance to cover this. Act of God or not. * —djo— }

‘Crazy Indians Brotherhood’ dole kindness to Winnipeg’s homeless { * But they clawed back $1.1 Billion that should have gone to Veterans’ Health Care while systematically denying that health care to veterans in real need? This stuff has to stop * —djo— }

Why it’s impossible to storm-proof the power grid { * uh, would that be because the over-charging power companies don’t want to spend any part of their ‘profits’ to upgrade or use technology that Nicola Tesla developped almost a hundred years ago that could make power distribution free to everyone on this planet? * —djo— }

Cannabinoid e-cigarettes to be available in more countries in 2015 { }

-Analysis- Neil Macdonald: Can America handle the truth about Saudi Arabia? { * Me: Can America handle the truth about itself? Can America handle the truth about September 11, 2001 or anything the C.I.A. has been involved in since its inception? How about the NSA? How about the ‘dark ops’ projects paid for by taxpayer dollars, how about the lies that taxes are the only income the U.S. Government has to work with? How about a dozen other examples of ‘the putrid underbelly of the american society’? * —djo— }

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“Local / New Brunswick”

“Fredericton Mother”

Mother and daughter in Fredericton

President of the Fredericton Youth Feminists

New Brunswick oil patch workers feel pinch of low prices { }

Beef prices not likely to drop any time soon { }

Fatal Bathurst police shooting confounds local residents { }

Cynthia Irving was strangled to death, Saint John jury hears { }

===== Earlier : =====

New Brunswick hit with more power outages { }

FHS dress code protest penalties too harsh, parents say { * Too many things about public education are too harsh on the students and families, I say. —djo— }

Shale gas poll finds New Brunswickers divided on issue { * How did they phrase the questions on that poll? “Would you sell your children’s and grandchildren’s future out so a couple ice-hole politicians can strike it rich?” <— That’s the real question. There is no such thing as ‘Safe Fracking’. They do not have the technology to ensure that their band-aid ‘fixes’ can keep poisons and flammable gasses from leaking into your drinking water when their patches rust, crack or otherwise fail in a couple years. This is not a joke, this is life and death. * —djo— }

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“First Nations”

Last June 26th, The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in favor of the Tsilhqot’in First Nation of B.C. granting it title over 438,000 hectares of land, the long ignored tribe became a priority for the B.C. government, CBC says this was a major ‘Game-Changer’. —djo—

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Lots of Pollution, Lots of Oil Company Profits, The Promised “Lots of Jobs” is a pile of bull chips. —djo—

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{ “Fude 4 Thought” : }

“As long as the fish still swim – This Land will be – Indian!” I want to cry every time I hear Richie Havens sing that song. And I play it a lot. —djo—

The building behind the sculpture is almost as amazing as the sculpture itself. I wonder if anybody lives in that building. —djo—

I think I want to raise Benjamin Franklin’s ghost, give him a really nasty weapon and tell him where to find everybody who is trying to kill the postal service in Canada and anywhere else on this planet. —djo—

Dang- The tweets are good today. This one is from fr0g5. Retweeted from @LawAbidingHuman —djo—

The only thing I really know about this person is that she has some very interesting tweets. —djo—

The Spirit of Fox News in a [Wing-] Nutshell? —djo—

Sometimes I think the world never forgave Haiti for beginning the struggle that put an end to overt endorsement of slavery by most ‘civilized’ governments. —djo—

Caution: Stephen Harper has proved himself to be dangerous to the health of this planet, its waterways, its inhabitants, our veterans, and your freedom to be who God meant you to be. —djo—

Just when I thought we might be able to tidy this place up, somebody has to go and send me stuff like this – Stop Monsanto before they stop us. What they’re doing is beyond ‘Cruel and Unusual’ but I would say, stop short of butchering the families of everybody who works for those Ice-Holes. There has to be a Humane way to deal with them. —djo—

” Danny Metatawabin, Brian Okimas and Paul Mettina walked 1,700 kilometers to Ottawa to raise awareness of treaty rights and encourage the federal government and their chiefs to work together to address and reconcile aboriginal issues.” —djo—

A quote from Battlesytar Gallactica? —djo—

&

I don’t know how this caption survived, but it did. I guess maybe I should keep it here: * Wealth Is Delusion * If you believe that anyone can ‘own’ the Earth, its resources or ‘wealth’ You’ve bought their ‘bull chips’ and you’ve already lost. You can’t play by their rules. They cheat. —djo—

Another Quote from Thomas Jefferson. I need to reflect on this before I endorse it whole heartedly — —djo—

2015-jan-01 This is cute, I hope that cat is not freezing to death out there, desperate to find a spot out of the wind or something. – & This was retweeted by fr0g5 & was just too big for me to take a screen shot and copy and paste with the laptop- —djo—

If this guy was orange, I’d swear they found Moe’s Baby Picture. —jim w—

Dang- Another tweet I thought has to be here. Dear Editor is the Sky, “Please advise! —Amen” —djo—

Less than 50,000 dangerous extremists out of 1.57 Billion Peaceful, & Honest Muslims? And the C.I.A. & Homeland Security Ice-Holes want you to be terrified of Islam? So they can push you around and take away the few freedoms you haven’t surrended yet? —djo—

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>>—-> We Are All One Spirit <—-<<

Glynis McCants is a Numerologist and a really good person. Even if our numbers don’t make us best friends 😉 —djo—

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>>—-> We Are All One Spirit <—-<<

“Imagine Peace Tower” on the 34th anniversary of an MK-Ultra targeted individual sending John Lennon to the next world. —djo—

Another Nice Message

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— “Other Media” : —

“I’ve got an idea, lets arm the Pandas and Belugas and let them save the planet while we play our video games and turn our souls off?” —djo—

The St. Lawrence Belugas Scored a Victory over the Deep Pocket Corporate Shills in what did not turn out to be a Water Polo Match. —djo—

I hope those Pandas and Belugas are well armed, we really need them…. —djo— Monday, 15 DEcember, this article/photo was retweeted quite a few times today. —djo—

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{ This is from the ‘Tweet-Us-Sphere’ : }

“At a low point in the 1990’s I started writing a story in which the Earth/Dimension we know and love split in two with most of the trees, bees and plants that give us food and shelter and oxygen, as well as the domestic and farm animals walked into perenial springtime and brought positive people with them, the nasties, the power crazy, the negative people all fell into a separate dimension/parallel world that immediately became a nuclear winter.” —jim w—

Malcolm X was murdered because he believed that the races could get along co-exist and co-prosper. Bad guys did not like that idea. They want to Divide & Conquer. —djo—

{ “Stephen Lewis roars once more in takedown of the Harper government: Newspaper Article from the Toronto Star: * Link * }

This photo bothers me for a couple reasons: (1) a prostitute who looks this good would not have to stand on a street corner to drum up business. (2) I don’t like the implications that anyone who dresses like this might be a prostitute – I mean think about it: Almost every woman in Hollywood these days would be suspect. (3) Any politician who tries to convince you that prostitutes are a bigger threat to your welfare than those politicians [are] should be castrated in public. —djo—

New York Times Reporter James Risen is facing jail times if he refuses to testify in a trial against a CIA agent accused of leaking sensitive material. Freedom Of The Press is always an issue, More so lately. —djo—

& Don’t forget Hong Kong

Palestinians show support for Ferguson, Missouri.

================

-Julian Assange’s Whistleblower Foundation has new members- Whistleblowers in general are peole who subscribe to higher standards of ethics and morality than their bosses or supervisors or government authoritarian types and are usually shocked to find out that lots of people do not back them up when they seek help because they’ve reported an injustice, or worse- and been ‘rewarded by being fired or even charged with crimes against corporations that the ‘justice system’, instead of locking up the bad guys, turns out to be protecting from the good guys, Constables got their start as enforcers for corrupt officials, corrupt ‘Nobles’ and ‘Royals’. When ‘serve and protect becomes law enforcement- that’s bad news for everybody. —djo—

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* Walter Burien’s Web site explains how governments all over the ‘free world’ are stealing from their citizens and ‘cooking their books’ : * link to CAFR1.com *

{ * Attention OathKeepers: When “Serve and Protect” becomes strict “Law Enforcement” with the civilian population seen as the enemy, Police become Terrorists. * Link to article in the Toronto Star * —djo— }

{ * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtzIKCqaZMQ * <——<< * Link * Moody Blues @ Home in 1995? from “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” I like many of the interesting details of Justin Hayward’s ‘Carriage House’ Home. —jim w— }

{ “America- Where are ya now? Don’t you care about your sons and daughters? Don’t ya know We need you now, We can’t fight alone against this monster-” -John Kay of Steppenwolf- & the Monster is the one who convinces the police that they need to arrest a harmless 90 year old man for feeding the homeless in Florida and scares honest police officers to the point where they’re killing unarmed/ harmless men and women. These Police Officers are Not the Enemy. Look Behind the Curtain. —djo— }

{ From @democracynow “We can reduce the prison population by 50% in the next 6-7 years if we just demand greater justice” * Link * the link might be more interesting than the above quote. —djo— }

Most recently, Mozilla and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) announced “Let’s Encrypt,” their collaboration with Cisco, Akamai, IdenTrust, and researchers at the University of Michigan in attempt to take the first big step towards a more universally secure Internet. One of the biggest weaknesses in the underlying architecture of the web as it exists currently is the highly bureaucratic and complex (not to mention costly) system required for websites to obtain and deploy the SSL/TSL certificates needed to protect your web surfing experience (these are the basic pieces of information that allow the little lock icon to work in your browser, signaling your session is private and secure). “Let’s Encrypt” will extend these digital certificates to all websites by starting an easy-to-use and free-of-charge certificate authority that issues them; this means that web encryption will not just be available to big players like banking services or email providers, but will set a much higher bar for Internet security across all websites, regardless of their ability to pay for a certificate or properly install it.

We are strong, adamant supporters of this initiative and are excitedly awaiting it’s unveiling in 2015 under a new nonprofit called the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG).

In addition to this, Mozilla announced it’s own strategic privacy initiative in collaboration the Tor Project and CDT. We’ll be consulting “on privacy technology, open standards, and future product collaborations” with the open-source browser to help it more effectively and appropriately bring privacy features into its products. “We want to accelerate pragmatic and user-focused advances in privacy technology for the Web, giving users more control, awareness and protection in their Web experiences,” the company explained via its privacy blog. – We believe in the possibilities that privacy innovations could make possible, and are excited and honored to be a part of the process. – What do these changes mean for the short- and long- term future of the security of the Internet? – There will soon be no excuses for not baking encryption into web services, and in turn, consumer privacy and protection into the tools we use to navigate the digital highway.

– “Our ultimate aim is for human rights defenders, journalists and civil society groups to be able to carry out their legitimate work without fear of surveillance, harassment, intimidation, arrest or torture,” Amnesty International said in an online posting introducing Detekt. – Whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed the extent of government surveillance on activists and citizens. Amnesty said it is concerned about a chill on human rights activists and journalists, especially those in repressive countries, because of such surveillance.

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Microsoft fixes 19-year old Windows bug { * – Microsoft Corp issued patches on Tuesday to fix a bug in its Windows operating system that remained undiscovered for 19 years. – The bug, which is present in every version of Microsoft Windows from Windows 95 onward, allows an attacker to remotely take over and control a computer.

– IBM Corp’s cybersecurity research team discovered the bug in May, describing it as a “significant vulnerability” in the operating system. – “The buggy code is at least 19 years old and has been remotely exploitable for the past 18 years,” IBM X-Force research team said in its blog on Tuesday. – *

*** The bugs were not “undiscovered”, Government Hackers spoke about this on Coast to Coast A.M. before the summer of 2002. Art Bell was the host. This program is not listed in the current Coast to Coast A.M. archives, at least I could not find it by searching ‘hackers’. 3 men who were quite ‘enthusiastic’ and talkative about their experience working for hackers for US Government agencies that ‘officially do not exist’ -one of them told us he has an ashtray with one of those officially non-existent agency’s official logo on it- told us that microsoft was fully aware of holes in their operating system but were not going to do anything about it because the government of the US liked it the way it was. They said it was simple for any hacker to get into your computer if you were ‘running windows’ -“Especially if you have printer sharing turned on.” && They also said they liked Apple Computers back then because it was possible to tell a Mac to do only one thing at a time, not like windows computers which could have all sorts of nonsense going on undetected in the background. – AND Another Coast to Coast A.M. guest, much more recently, related talking to a computer pioneer a long time ago, when dial ups were the latest thing, and when the computer guy finished showing him something, he would not leave the room without shutting off his computer, and disconnecting the phone line from his computer. When the C2C guest asked the computer guy what that was all about, the computer guy said that he, as in insider, knew that the US Government could already get into anyone’s computer that was connected to Delphi or GEnie or AOL, even if the computer had been turned off. — And, now that almost every computer in the world has WiFi capabilities- you can never fully disconnect yourself from the possibility that they can turn your computer on and gather any information you have, or were ever connected to- any time they want to do that- With the possible exception that you might be ‘safe’ if you live inside a Faraday cage, a hundred feet or more beneath the surface of this planet. Welcome to the future, it sucks. —jim w— }

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-Archived?:-

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– A federal agency banned public employees from accessing news stories at Blacklock’sReporter via government internet servers, documents confirm. Confidential records show Shared Services Canada imposed the government-wide blackout on website access by hundreds of thousands of staff. Files on the blacklisting were obtained through Access To Information. – Shared Services Canada offered no explanation. A 218-page file detailing the ban is heavily censored and conceals email messages in which Shared Services staff discuss the action in messages headed, “Block Domain: Blacklocks.ca”. – “This is outrageous conduct,” said Blacklock’s publisher Holly Doan, who noted the newsroom first learned of the blacklisting from individual subscribers in federal departments who were unable to access news content. Shared Services Canada manages telecom services for 43 departments. – No reason is given for the blacklisting. Blacklock’s is an accredited member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery covering bills, regulations, Access to Information and federal courts. – “It’s astonishing to see Canada join the short list of countries that forbid public employees from accessing internet news sites,” Doan said. “This is not only Orwellian, it appears to breach the government’s own guidelines on workplace internet use.” – Cabinet’s official Policy On Acceptable Network & Device Use adopted in 2013 permits federal employees to “search for information online” and “share links to professional activities and events or interesting and relevant articles”. The Policy also details “unacceptable use” of government computers including access to “hate propaganda”; “pornography”; “obscenity”; and “illegal gambling”. – Doan said, “Surely Shared Services Canada can tell the difference between Blacklock’s and a jihadist website or crime syndicate”; “No rational agency would blacklist an accredited news site in the name of security or crime prevention”. Doan noted the Blacklock’s ban appeared to be revoked September 9, the same day the publication filed a formal request for records from Shared Services Canada. – ‘Way Ahead There, Boss Man’ – Documents indicate the government’s central internet provider blocks numerous domain sites. Shared Services Canada would not explain how many sites it has blacklisted, what their names are, or how many others are accredited news sites. “We do not comment on the specifics of methods used to protect the Government of Canada’s IT infrastructure,” said Marie-Helene Rouillard, a Shared Services spokesperson. – Access To Information records show the department’s IT security division blocked the website blacklocks.ca from last August 22, sending an email alert to numerous agencies including the Department of Industry, Correctional Service of Canada, tax department and others. “The email went to all contacts we have on record,” Dave Tough, a Shared Services security analyst, writes in one August 25 email; “Way ahead of you there, boss-man.” – Tough rated the alert of “high importance”, and indicated several IT staff monitored the news site. Blacklock’s was also cited in an August 27 Cyber Brief distributed to telecom staff across all government agencies; “Cyber Briefs are publications released by the Government of Canada with the goal of preventing widespread incidents,” the memo reads. All references to Blacklock’s were lengthy and censored. – Tough did not reply to repeated requests for an interview. “At no time did our newsroom pose a security threat to the nation,” said Publisher Doan. – Under cabinet’s Policy on workplace computer use, more than 200,000 federal employees are permitted to “watch online broadcasts of work-related content” and “keep up-to-date with news and current events”, according to Examples Of Acceptable Use. Other permitted activities include “subscribe to web feeds”; “check the weather forecast”; “confirm bus schedule information”; “read or contribute to online forums”; and “visit social networking sites to connect with family and friends”. – Forbidden computer activities include using workplace computers to “make public comments about government policies”; “engage in political activity”; or “breach the duty of loyalty requirement for public servants”. –

Apprenticeship ad’s claim of skilled trades shortfall open to question { * And the current sitting government of Canada has been accused of lying in these ads as well as using taxpayer dollars to fund the ads which are thinly veiled campaign ‘bull chips’ to try to keep themselves in power while they fleece the country- Steal 1.1 Billion dollars from Veterans’ healt care and give it back to try to brag about saving money while denying health care to Vets, discharging Vets months before they would be elligible for their pensions, closing down 9 regional offices where veterans used to be able to get help with their health claims- and then spending hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money on lying television ads about the economy? Gag me with a spoon? * —djo— }

-Special Report- Would you know what to do if someone told you they were raped? { * Link * } }

-Analysis- Gobal corruption a bigger scourge than terrorism: Brian Stewart { * Link to the CBC article. * *** And The whole idea behind our ‘modern’ system of ‘banking’ is probably the most corrupt ‘system’ in this world. *** —djo— }

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{ My friends in the U.S. tell me I’m lucky to be in Canada. They are usually correct. —jim w— }

{ 12:25 pm EST — Almost a week late- But — We are Ready to Rock and Roll — & Thanks again for your help, Jim W, and “—jda—“ ———djo——— }

– Jim W is right – Today almost feels like a ‘Woodstock Moment’ – —djo—

We should all ‘Peace Out’ This tweet suggests getting back to nature with a camera might help 🙂 —djo—

Retweeted by fr0g5 : Originally from @Ou_Prg : “Nite nite twitterhearts, beautiful angel dreams xoxo hugs and kisses for all and of course much love from Prague” * Too tall to copy & paste the tweet * —djo—

Sounds Good To Me – —djo—

– I’ve been angry with FDR for allowing the Federal Reserve Bank to become established in the U.S.A. But I must admit, I missed the above quote. This still does not dismiss the Federal Reserve – but it makes me wonder if somebody slipped that past him. —djo—

Twitter Reacts to #JeSuisCharlie —djo—

Isn’t Peaceful Assembly guaranteed under the U.S. Bill of Rights?“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Hmmm- Philosophy? = Yum. —djo—

Um, It would be nice if this was actually the way it works – Freedom Of Expression without Compassion won’t quite do it. If the downtrodden don’t know that you care about them and are willing to try to help them, you’ll still have trouble. —djo—

“Support the Wet’suwets’en First Nation in their struggle to stop Pipelines on their land.” —djo—

Will the failure of the tar-sands pipeline bid bring Harper down? —djo—

C’est Bon! Et Je Suis —djo—

More flack over Fantino – Blame Harper? or pass the buck to those “only following orders”?

In the middle of a very visible crisis with returning Canadian Veterans committing suicide, being denied pensions and facing incredible long waits for health care, the Harper government closed down 9 regional Veteran’s Administration offices and his hand picked, now fired, Minister of Veterans’ Affairs cheated their vets out of 1.1 Billion dollars and handed that money to Stephen Harper as a present? —djo—

“Gag!” I’m getting sick of hearing more and more of what this guy [Harper] is doing to destroy Canada. Time for a big change, ya think? —djo—

{ New Stuff Every Day: We don’t change the images with the twitter stuff every day, but there will almost always be something new there, usually at the top of each section.The red headlines under ‘read this:’ & ‘Not this:’ Will be new. The top 4 headlines in blue “Offbeat” will usually be new.The top ten headlines in maroon/brown under “Most Viewed” are almost always all new, with CBC repeating or rewording something every now and then. Some of the green healines under “Other” are new, the ones at the top of the list are the most new.The top 4 purple headlines under “Local / New Brunswick” are New, except when some of those top 4 are repeated over the weekend or a holiday.And several of the top olive green headlines under “First Nations” are new on most days. — thanks, —djo— }

Nice Message —jim w—

{ +4,755 New tweets since 9 pm yesterday – & It just might be National “Something or Other Day”, but nobody tells me these things – —djo— }

{ Headlines missing from below: —> Harper’s trying to look like a hero by claiming he is giving families a big tax break. Nope, he’s giving millionaires’ families a big tax break. ‘Normal people’ are carrying the richest ice-holes’ weight. Why do white cops shoot young black men? * Link * Interesting twist on New Brunswick’s moratorium on Fracking : At the top of the list of what would have to change before the new Premier of N.B. would allow fracking and pre-fracking ‘explorations’ would be “Social License” which, he explained, would mean that the citizens of New Brunswick would have to be in favor of that fracking. = “Hmmmm” – * UBER software raised prices during Australian Hostage Crisis to $140-$200 dollars per ride. Then apologized and offered repayments. — & Loads of people anonymously did nice things for people they never met & Media completely missed that. * —djo— }

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– A federal agency banned public employees from accessing news stories at Blacklock’sReporter via government internet servers, documents confirm. Confidential records show Shared Services Canada imposed the government-wide blackout on website access by hundreds of thousands of staff. Files on the blacklisting were obtained through Access To Information. – Shared Services Canada offered no explanation. A 218-page file detailing the ban is heavily censored and conceals email messages in which Shared Services staff discuss the action in messages headed, “Block Domain: Blacklocks.ca”. – “This is outrageous conduct,” said Blacklock’s publisher Holly Doan, who noted the newsroom first learned of the blacklisting from individual subscribers in federal departments who were unable to access news content. Shared Services Canada manages telecom services for 43 departments. – No reason is given for the blacklisting. Blacklock’s is an accredited member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery covering bills, regulations, Access to Information and federal courts. – “It’s astonishing to see Canada join the short list of countries that forbid public employees from accessing internet news sites,” Doan said. “This is not only Orwellian, it appears to breach the government’s own guidelines on workplace internet use.” – Cabinet’s official Policy On Acceptable Network & Device Use adopted in 2013 permits federal employees to “search for information online” and “share links to professional activities and events or interesting and relevant articles”. The Policy also details “unacceptable use” of government computers including access to “hate propaganda”; “pornography”; “obscenity”; and “illegal gambling”. – Doan said, “Surely Shared Services Canada can tell the difference between Blacklock’s and a jihadist website or crime syndicate”; “No rational agency would blacklist an accredited news site in the name of security or crime prevention”. Doan noted the Blacklock’s ban appeared to be revoked September 9, the same day the publication filed a formal request for records from Shared Services Canada. – ‘Way Ahead There, Boss Man’ – Documents indicate the government’s central internet provider blocks numerous domain sites. Shared Services Canada would not explain how many sites it has blacklisted, what their names are, or how many others are accredited news sites. “We do not comment on the specifics of methods used to protect the Government of Canada’s IT infrastructure,” said Marie-Helene Rouillard, a Shared Services spokesperson. – Access To Information records show the department’s IT security division blocked the website blacklocks.ca from last August 22, sending an email alert to numerous agencies including the Department of Industry, Correctional Service of Canada, tax department and others. “The email went to all contacts we have on record,” Dave Tough, a Shared Services security analyst, writes in one August 25 email; “Way ahead of you there, boss-man.” – Tough rated the alert of “high importance”, and indicated several IT staff monitored the news site. Blacklock’s was also cited in an August 27 Cyber Brief distributed to telecom staff across all government agencies; “Cyber Briefs are publications released by the Government of Canada with the goal of preventing widespread incidents,” the memo reads. All references to Blacklock’s were lengthy and censored. – Tough did not reply to repeated requests for an interview. “At no time did our newsroom pose a security threat to the nation,” said Publisher Doan. – Under cabinet’s Policy on workplace computer use, more than 200,000 federal employees are permitted to “watch online broadcasts of work-related content” and “keep up-to-date with news and current events”, according to Examples Of Acceptable Use. Other permitted activities include “subscribe to web feeds”; “check the weather forecast”; “confirm bus schedule information”; “read or contribute to online forums”; and “visit social networking sites to connect with family and friends”. – Forbidden computer activities include using workplace computers to “make public comments about government policies”; “engage in political activity”; or “breach the duty of loyalty requirement for public servants”. –

=======================

{ We’ve tried to move all the New stuff up top here. There may be important and interesting stuff below: Bears, Belugas and Cats may be more important than the corporate ‘bull chips’ in the news to many of our readers, but we tried to give the current newsy stuff priority. }

Give Hope to the Homeless in the face of adversity. There’s always a little bit of Heaven in the middle of a disaster zone. Conentrate on the Heaven and alleviate the disaster. —djo—

Canada In Winter. A poem. This may be a little hard to read. —djo—

Understatement of the day?: Kids’ brains are important. & I didn’t copy and paste another tweet that says parents should remove tablets and smart phones from kids’ hands before they let them go to bed. Another tweet cites a teenaged suicide victim and says we should see kids rights as being more important than parents’ rights. —djo—

Monopoly – Version 2015.1 ? —djo—

Is this a case of, “If it makes me look bad, it must be someone else’s problem.” & Anybody caught looking bad while following Harper’s Orders can always be replaced by another Party line enforcer? Ya rthink? —djo—

-Pretend you’re a human being with an actual functioning heart – check. —djo—

===Read This:

Lead Articles: Today’s Theme?: “Tell me something Positive!”

“Snowy owl ‘epidemic’ sweeps across Ontario.

There are a few things that might be suspicious about the Charlie Hebdo shootings. Beginning with: Why would ‘professionals’ leave the kind of evidence behind that they supposedly left in vehicles? And: If the French security forces are so sure they have so many ‘suspects’ and have knows about them for some time: Did they allow the massacre to take place? Have they allowed suspectes to leave the country so they could follow them somewhere? ;

When the news is filled with reprts of people posing as police officers to commit crimes, did a woman pulled over by police believe she was being assaulted by a criminal in a police uniform? & Putting on a police uniform does not autmatically make anyone an angel. ;

Three experienced hikers fell to their deaths in B.C. ;

Two Albuquerque, New Mexico, police officers shot a knife-wielding homeless guy. They’ve been charged with murder. If a civilian in the U.S.A. shot and killed somebody who lunged at them with a knife, they would be charged with something. Whether the policemen in this case are found guilty or not, this looks like someone’s attempt to ‘level the playing field’ or apply laws equally to ‘civilians’ and police. ;

===Not This:

6 attack suspects may still be at large as France mobilizes 10,000 security forces ;

Dashcam shows roadside arrest of woman who says she feared for her life ;

Bodies of 3 recovered after fatal fall on B.C. peak ;

2 U.S. police officers charged with murder in death of homeless man ;

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Blasts from the recent past:

Politicians paying somebody to wipe out evidence of overspending? They do more than that, GOTO: CAFR1.Com ;

& – Wouldn’t it be nice if people started living by “Love they Neighbor as thyself”- ‘Could you believe it- no more war—‘ –

There’s a link directly above this section in the caption of a copied and pasted re-tweet defining a global economic flying ‘shitstorm’ – The ‘bad guys’ are plotting to manipulate an economic collapse in order to tighten their grip on everyone and take away what remaining freedoms you believe you still have. One encouraging forecast I heard: There are a lot more of ‘US’ than there are of ‘Them’ – ‘Them = Banksters’ and people will not take this. We might have a rough go for a while, but we will shut those Banksters down and change the way we view economic matters. Let’s hope that forecast was right and lets pray for all the help we need to get through this with ‘ease and grace’ [ —djo— ];

The Keystone pipeline. Um, (1) Big oil companies have ‘buried’ patents for processes that could make competitive technologies viable. (2) Nicola Tesla knew about and was working on methods to distribute electricity free to everybody and the rich and powerful ruined him financially because he was a threat to their monopolies. (3) There’s a book that might be available somewhere, “The Energy Non-Crisis” by Lindsey Williams, a Baptist Pastor who was privileged to insider information and learned that oil keeps replentishing itself, Oil Companies have raised their prices based on lies and are still making record profits. Farmers in Texas discovered new oil on their property, thought they would be rich, signed deals with big oil companies had their wells dug and were told that the oil companies were not going to use their oil, no matter how good it was and they couldn’t tell the world about this because, according to the terms of their contracts, the big oil companies could sue them for everything they were worth if they did. Big Oil is dirty business. Oil-Sands / Tar-Sands is dirty business. Send them buggers to the poor house, or banish them to a parallel dimension where their kind of policies have ruined whole planets and let them starve and freeze with what they’ve done staring them in their faces. ;

Re: Bill Cosby. We will not add to his ‘Trial by Media’ here. He performed in Ontario. He has not been charged by police. Perhaps allogations like those leveled against him should not be made public. I am a firm believer in “Judge Not, Lest Ye Be Judged” and Everyone should be ‘Presumed Innocent’ until God tells me they’re guilty. And I don’t think God will break silence for something like that. ;

On a day when the lead article should be the very unpopular Minister of Veterans Affairs being fired and replaced by a hand picked party line enforcer, The lead ‘story’ here was the Junior World Hockey championship? Jeeze! – ;

Housing costs everywhere in the world are controlled by greedy ice-holes. Until we fix that problem by removing those greedy ice-holes from the equation, be prepared to be hammered in the brain by silly propaganda designed to keep you off balance and in a state of anxiety about everything in your environment. Pray for Angelic Intervention. Bring Heaven to Earth. “Help! – Amen” ;

All kids need a place to play where they can act out their dreams and even mimic the grown up ice-holes they see every day. I’ll include University aged men and women in this. There should be someplace where almost-grown-up kids can be complete ice-holes for a laugh, as long as they don’t hurt anybody. Maybe universities need in-house computer bulletin boards where students can post all kinds of inflamatory b.s. and nobody outside their little group will ever see it. Faculty could probably use something like that, too. A Private Venting Board where you can call your dean a complete freakin’ waste of good dna and get away with it. We never would have heard about Lieutenant Dish if rabid political correctness was in force when M.A.S.H. first entered our collective, -clear throat- uh- ‘consciousness’ (?) – ;

The problem with big oil began with the fact that they’ve been lying to all of us all along. Oil is created by some natural process inside the earth and on distant planets and moons that never had dinosaurs. It is not ‘fossil fuel’. It constantly replentishes itself. There never was or will be an oil shortage. Prices you pay are inflated by lies. What we need here is cheap renewable energy, which the sun and planet provide for free. Put them lying cheating manipulating Oil Barons in the poor house. Or better yet, put them in Jail – ;

Trial by mass media does not make anyone guilty. There is due process. Celebrities should not be put on trial in the corporate media before they have been found guilty in a court of law. And think about this: How many people who have been convicted of really heinous crimes have been exonerated by dna evidence in the last few years. Our ‘Justice’ systems are imperfect and subject to corruption and mistakes made by honest people. You better hope you never have to bet your life on your country’s ‘Justice’ system. ;

Oilsands, Tarsands. The technology is out there to provide everybody on this planet with free energy. WE can and should make sure that everybody on this planet has a safe shelter and enough to eat. We can do that. We should have been doing that all along. There is no such thing as ‘Fossil Fuel’. But YES! Canada should leave its oilsands in the ground, where it belongs. ;

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If you really want to see all of today’s CBC headlines go to their website, listed as a link below this line:

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Updat

White Deer? We were accused of trying to pass a goat off as a deer in New Brunswick. *** Our deer friends are back and happy that we’ve got a nice big bag of oats to share with them for Yuletide celebrations. Not a single one of them was wearing a Santa Claus Hat or wearing jingle bells. That is probably a good thing. *** —jim w— *** UPDATE We thought we saw a news story that reported that the white deer in this photo had been killed by a bus up the street. Nope. Tonight she was one of several deer who showed up to thank us for the oats we give them.

“Offbeat”

Husky reunited with her human.

“Deer on Ice Rescued” – This seems more like “Human Decency” than ‘offbeat’.

“Dawn of the Ducks”?

LED lights on a kayak paddle produced this effect. Yum 🙂 —djo—

Three Alaskans Save Avalanche – Trapped Moose. —djo—

The best lines and zingers of the Golden Globes { }

Icelandic brewery adds smoked whale testicles to beer { }

Bud Light built a life-sized Pac-Man maze for 2015 Super Bowl { }

Athabasca University set to drop puck on world’s first hockey executive MBA { }

Son pays off parents’ mortgage for Christmas { * & The money used to ‘bail out’ the ‘Too big to fail’ Banksters could have paid off everybody’s Mortgages several years ago. The human race survived on this planet for seven and a half million years without banks trying to control us. “Banking Establishments are more dangerous than standing armies!” -Thomas Jefferson. Burn down the banks. Tar and feather anybody who voted for that bail-out. * —djo— }

Labrador hoisted to safety after falling 46 metres off cliff { The dog got spooked but survived, with ‘minor injuries but walked out to the trailhead’ after a climber rappelled to a narrow ledge with a rescue harness and both dog and climber were hoisted to safety by an 8-person crew from the Oregon Humane Society. This shouldn’t be ‘Offbeat’- This should be the kind of good news we need a lot more of. 🙂 —djo— }

Students develop app that rewards you for ignoring your phone in social situations { }

Swedish town seeks to prevent torching of giant Christmas straw goat { * It’s a tradition in the town of Gävle, every Christmas they build a 13 meter tall straw goat and about 50% of the time vandals burn it down. * Link to WebCam * At least in my browser, there was a ‘click here to translate this page’ thing visible for a couple seconds. Jim W has some distant relatives somewhere in Sweden – —djo— }

‘Crazy Indians Brotherhood’ dole kindness to Winnipeg’s homeless { * But they clawed back $1.1 Billion that should have gone to Veterans’ Health Care while systematically denying that health care to veterans in real need? This stuff has to stop * —djo— }

Why it’s impossible to storm-proof the power grid { * uh, would that be because the over-charging power companies don’t want to spend any part of their ‘profits’ to upgrade or use technology that Nicola Tesla developped almost a hundred years ago that could make power distribution free to everyone on this planet? * —djo— }

Cannabinoid e-cigarettes to be available in more countries in 2015 { }

-Analysis- Neil Macdonald: Can America handle the truth about Saudi Arabia? { * Me: Can America handle the truth about itself? Can America handle the truth about September 11, 2001 or anything the C.I.A. has been involved in since its inception? How about the NSA? How about the ‘dark ops’ projects paid for by taxpayer dollars, how about the lies that taxes are the only income the U.S. Government has to work with? How about a dozen other examples of ‘the putrid underbelly of the american society’? * —djo— }

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“Local / New Brunswick”

“Fredericton Mother”

Mother and daughter in Fredericton

President of the Fredericton Youth Feminists

Man shot and killed by Bathurst police during investigation { }

Jury selection in Irving murder trial wraps up in Saint John { }

Gilbert Finn’s funeral draws hundreds of mourners in Dieppe { }

Cannaport LNG’s tax deal may be killed by possible { * A New Brunswick Liquid Natural Gas pipeline currently taxes Irving Oil $500,000 per year. If this pipeline is converted to export, rather than import Natural gas, that would save Irving a whole lot of money. Hey, do you think that might have anything to do with the big push to get the Energy East Pipeline upgrade in place? Take notice on who backs that venture. * —djo— }

===== Earlier : =====

New Brunswick hit with more power outages { }

FHS dress code protest penalties too harsh, parents say { * Too many things about public education are too harsh on the students and families, I say. —djo— }

Shale gas poll finds New Brunswickers divided on issue { * How did they phrase the questions on that poll? “Would you sell your children’s and grandchildren’s future out so a couple ice-hole politicians can strike it rich?” <— That’s the real question. There is no such thing as ‘Safe Fracking’. They do not have the technology to ensure that their band-aid ‘fixes’ can keep poisons and flammable gasses from leaking into your drinking water when their patches rust, crack or otherwise fail in a couple years. This is not a joke, this is life and death. * —djo— }

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“First Nations”

Last June 26th, The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in favor of the Tsilhqot’in First Nation of B.C. granting it title over 438,000 hectares of land, the long ignored tribe became a priority for the B.C. government, CBC says this was a major ‘Game-Changer’. —djo—

Reporter’s Notebook: Angela Sterritt on the oilsands paradox { * “Reporting on a tiny community downstream from Alberta’s Athabasca oilsands was one of the hardest stories I have worked on in my life”. * —djo— }

=======================

Lots of Pollution, Lots of Oil Company Profits, The Promised “Lots of Jobs” is a pile of bull chips. —djo—

==============

{ “Fude 4 Thought” : }

“As long as the fish still swim – This Land will be – Indian!” I want to cry every time I hear Richie Havens sing that song. And I play it a lot. —djo—

The building behind the sculpture is almost as amazing as the sculpture itself. I wonder if anybody lives in that building. —djo—

Something I haven’t taken the time to think about. —djo—

I think I want to raise Benjamin Franklin’s ghost, give him a really nasty weapon and tell him where to find everybody who is trying to kill the postal service in Canada and anywhere else on this planet. —djo—

Dang- The tweets are good today. This one is from fr0g5. Retweeted from @LawAbidingHuman —djo—

The only thing I really know about this person is that she has some very interesting tweets. —djo—

The Spirit of Fox News in a [Wing-] Nutshell? —djo—

Sometimes I think the world never forgave Haiti for beginning the struggle that put an end to overt endorsement of slavery by most ‘civilized’ governments. —djo—

Caution: Stephen Harper has proved himself to be dangerous to the health of this planet, its waterways, its inhabitants, our veterans, and your freedom to be who God meant you to be. —djo—

Just when I thought we might be able to tidy this place up, somebody has to go and send me stuff like this – Stop Monsanto before they stop us. What they’re doing is beyond ‘Cruel and Unusual’ but I would say, stop short of butchering the families of everybody who works for those Ice-Holes. There has to be a Humane way to deal with them. —djo—

” Danny Metatawabin, Brian Okimas and Paul Mettina walked 1,700 kilometers to Ottawa to raise awareness of treaty rights and encourage the federal government and their chiefs to work together to address and reconcile aboriginal issues.” —djo—

A quote from Battlesytar Gallactica? —djo—

&

I don’t know how this caption survived, but it did. I guess maybe I should keep it here: * Wealth Is Delusion * If you believe that anyone can ‘own’ the Earth, its resources or ‘wealth’ You’ve bought their ‘bull chips’ and you’ve already lost. You can’t play by their rules. They cheat. —djo—

Another Quote from Thomas Jefferson. I need to reflect on this before I endorse it whole heartedly — —djo—

A ‘Sea of Flowers’ in a seaside park in Japan. —djo—

2015-jan-01 This is cute, I hope that cat is not freezing to death out there, desperate to find a spot out of the wind or something. – & This was retweeted by fr0g5 & was just too big for me to take a screen shot and copy and paste with the laptop- —djo—

If this guy was orange, I’d swear they found Moe’s Baby Picture. —jim w—

Dang- Another tweet I thought has to be here. Dear Editor is the Sky, “Please advise! —Amen” —djo—

Less than 50,000 dangerous extremists out of 1.57 Billion Peaceful, & Honest Muslims? And the C.I.A. & Homeland Security Ice-Holes want you to be terrified of Islam? So they can push you around and take away the few freedoms you haven’t surrended yet? —djo—

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>>—-> We Are All One Spirit <—-<<

Glynis McCants is a Numerologist and a really good person. Even if our numbers don’t make us best friends 😉 —djo—

=========

>>—-> We Are All One Spirit <—-<<

“Imagine Peace Tower” on the 34th anniversary of an MK-Ultra targeted individual sending John Lennon to the next world. —djo—

Another Nice Message

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— “Other Media” : —

“I’ve got an idea, lets arm the Pandas and Belugas and let them save the planet while we play our video games and turn our souls off?” —djo—

The St. Lawrence Belugas Scored a Victory over the Deep Pocket Corporate Shills in what did not turn out to be a Water Polo Match. —djo—

I hope those Pandas and Belugas are well armed, we really need them…. —djo— Monday, 15 DEcember, this article/photo was retweeted quite a few times today. —djo—

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{ This is from the ‘Tweet-Us-Sphere’ : }

“At a low point in the 1990’s I started writing a story in which the Earth/Dimension we know and love split in two with most of the trees, bees and plants that give us food and shelter and oxygen, as well as the domestic and farm animals walked into perenial springtime and brought positive people with them, the nasties, the power crazy, the negative people all fell into a separate dimension/parallel world that immediately became a nuclear winter.” —jim w—

Malcolm X was murdered because he believed that the races could get along co-exist and co-prosper. Bad guys did not like that idea. They want to Divide & Conquer. —djo—

{ “Stephen Lewis roars once more in takedown of the Harper government: Newspaper Article from the Toronto Star: * Link * }

This photo bothers me for a couple reasons: (1) a prostitute who looks this good would not have to stand on a street corner to drum up business. (2) I don’t like the implications that anyone who dresses like this might be a prostitute – I mean think about it: Almost every woman in Hollywood these days would be suspect. (3) Any politician who tries to convince you that prostitutes are a bigger threat to your welfare than those politicians [are] should be castrated in public. —djo—

New York Times Reporter James Risen is facing jail times if he refuses to testify in a trial against a CIA agent accused of leaking sensitive material. Freedom Of The Press is always an issue, More so lately. —djo—

& Don’t forget Hong Kong

Palestinians show support for Ferguson, Missouri.

================

-Julian Assange’s Whistleblower Foundation has new members- Whistleblowers in general are peole who subscribe to higher standards of ethics and morality than their bosses or supervisors or government authoritarian types and are usually shocked to find out that lots of people do not back them up when they seek help because they’ve reported an injustice, or worse- and been ‘rewarded by being fired or even charged with crimes against corporations that the ‘justice system’, instead of locking up the bad guys, turns out to be protecting from the good guys, Constables got their start as enforcers for corrupt officials, corrupt ‘Nobles’ and ‘Royals’. When ‘serve and protect becomes law enforcement- that’s bad news for everybody. —djo—

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I remember being in 5th or 6th grade, reading about Archaeologists exploring what they believed were the earliest ruins of a civilization that died out ‘thousands of years ago’ & thinking that was almost incomprehensible- Then somebody told me there has been intelligent life on this planet for 11 million years. now they’re finding 110 million year old fossils? wow- — djo—

* Walter Burien’s Web site explains how governments all over the ‘free world’ are stealing from their citizens and ‘cooking their books’ : * link to CAFR1.com *

{ * Attention OathKeepers: When “Serve and Protect” becomes strict “Law Enforcement” with the civilian population seen as the enemy, Police become Terrorists. * Link to article in the Toronto Star * —djo— }

{ * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtzIKCqaZMQ * <——<< * Link * Moody Blues @ Home in 1995? from “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” I like many of the interesting details of Justin Hayward’s ‘Carriage House’ Home. —jim w— }

{ “America- Where are ya now? Don’t you care about your sons and daughters? Don’t ya know We need you now, We can’t fight alone against this monster-” -John Kay of Steppenwolf- & the Monster is the one who convinces the police that they need to arrest a harmless 90 year old man for feeding the homeless in Florida and scares honest police officers to the point where they’re killing unarmed/ harmless men and women. These Police Officers are Not the Enemy. Look Behind the Curtain. —djo— }

{ From @democracynow “We can reduce the prison population by 50% in the next 6-7 years if we just demand greater justice” * Link * the link might be more interesting than the above quote. —djo— }

Most recently, Mozilla and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) announced “Let’s Encrypt,” their collaboration with Cisco, Akamai, IdenTrust, and researchers at the University of Michigan in attempt to take the first big step towards a more universally secure Internet. One of the biggest weaknesses in the underlying architecture of the web as it exists currently is the highly bureaucratic and complex (not to mention costly) system required for websites to obtain and deploy the SSL/TSL certificates needed to protect your web surfing experience (these are the basic pieces of information that allow the little lock icon to work in your browser, signaling your session is private and secure). “Let’s Encrypt” will extend these digital certificates to all websites by starting an easy-to-use and free-of-charge certificate authority that issues them; this means that web encryption will not just be available to big players like banking services or email providers, but will set a much higher bar for Internet security across all websites, regardless of their ability to pay for a certificate or properly install it.

We are strong, adamant supporters of this initiative and are excitedly awaiting it’s unveiling in 2015 under a new nonprofit called the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG).

In addition to this, Mozilla announced it’s own strategic privacy initiative in collaboration the Tor Project and CDT. We’ll be consulting “on privacy technology, open standards, and future product collaborations” with the open-source browser to help it more effectively and appropriately bring privacy features into its products. “We want to accelerate pragmatic and user-focused advances in privacy technology for the Web, giving users more control, awareness and protection in their Web experiences,” the company explained via its privacy blog. – We believe in the possibilities that privacy innovations could make possible, and are excited and honored to be a part of the process. – What do these changes mean for the short- and long- term future of the security of the Internet? – There will soon be no excuses for not baking encryption into web services, and in turn, consumer privacy and protection into the tools we use to navigate the digital highway.

– “Our ultimate aim is for human rights defenders, journalists and civil society groups to be able to carry out their legitimate work without fear of surveillance, harassment, intimidation, arrest or torture,” Amnesty International said in an online posting introducing Detekt. – Whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed the extent of government surveillance on activists and citizens. Amnesty said it is concerned about a chill on human rights activists and journalists, especially those in repressive countries, because of such surveillance.

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Microsoft fixes 19-year old Windows bug { * – Microsoft Corp issued patches on Tuesday to fix a bug in its Windows operating system that remained undiscovered for 19 years. – The bug, which is present in every version of Microsoft Windows from Windows 95 onward, allows an attacker to remotely take over and control a computer.

– IBM Corp’s cybersecurity research team discovered the bug in May, describing it as a “significant vulnerability” in the operating system. – “The buggy code is at least 19 years old and has been remotely exploitable for the past 18 years,” IBM X-Force research team said in its blog on Tuesday. – *

*** The bugs were not “undiscovered”, Government Hackers spoke about this on Coast to Coast A.M. before the summer of 2002. Art Bell was the host. This program is not listed in the current Coast to Coast A.M. archives, at least I could not find it by searching ‘hackers’. 3 men who were quite ‘enthusiastic’ and talkative about their experience working for hackers for US Government agencies that ‘officially do not exist’ -one of them told us he has an ashtray with one of those officially non-existent agency’s official logo on it- told us that microsoft was fully aware of holes in their operating system but were not going to do anything about it because the government of the US liked it the way it was. They said it was simple for any hacker to get into your computer if you were ‘running windows’ -“Especially if you have printer sharing turned on.” && They also said they liked Apple Computers back then because it was possible to tell a Mac to do only one thing at a time, not like windows computers which could have all sorts of nonsense going on undetected in the background. – AND Another Coast to Coast A.M. guest, much more recently, related talking to a computer pioneer a long time ago, when dial ups were the latest thing, and when the computer guy finished showing him something, he would not leave the room without shutting off his computer, and disconnecting the phone line from his computer. When the C2C guest asked the computer guy what that was all about, the computer guy said that he, as in insider, knew that the US Government could already get into anyone’s computer that was connected to Delphi or GEnie or AOL, even if the computer had been turned off. — And, now that almost every computer in the world has WiFi capabilities- you can never fully disconnect yourself from the possibility that they can turn your computer on and gather any information you have, or were ever connected to- any time they want to do that- With the possible exception that you might be ‘safe’ if you live inside a Faraday cage, a hundred feet or more beneath the surface of this planet. Welcome to the future, it sucks. —jim w— }

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-Archived?:-

Apprenticeship ad’s claim of skilled trades shortfall open to question { * And the current sitting government of Canada has been accused of lying in these ads as well as using taxpayer dollars to fund the ads which are thinly veiled campaign ‘bull chips’ to try to keep themselves in power while they fleece the country- Steal 1.1 Billion dollars from Veterans’ healt care and give it back to try to brag about saving money while denying health care to Vets, discharging Vets months before they would be elligible for their pensions, closing down 9 regional offices where veterans used to be able to get help with their health claims- and then spending hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money on lying television ads about the economy? Gag me with a spoon? * —djo— }

Quebec woman gets jail time after stopping for ducklings led to 2 deaths { * Morton Thiokol executives never even got their wrists slapped for ignoring warnings from engineers. This led to the spectacular explosion that killed everyone aboard a high profile NASA Shuttle launch. I say maybe they could justify locking up someone who tried to save any life after they’ve locked up everybody who willfully let many more people die in the name of corporate profits. * —djo— } Emma Czrnobaj gets 90 days in jail for [trying to save ducks on a highway and causing a fatal accident in the process] { }

Poor posture from technology use can lead to 4 damaging effects { * But the Canadian Chiropractic Society has a free app to inspire you to improve your posture and improve your health * Link * —djo— }

Immigration law that split young family frevents child trafficking, government says { * (1) do not believe anything your government tells you. (2) you gotta be out of your mind to believe that anything your government does is in your best interest. * —djo— }

– ‘What else are they doing wrong?’ artists wonder of Revenue Canada { * The short answer? believing the propagandist liars who tell them that the government needs tax money to offer any kind of services to the people it wants to keep down under their thumbs – They have income streams they reallllly don’t want you to know about. Demand the truth now! * Link to CAFR1 dot com * —djo— }

-Analysis- Question authority? Not if you are black in America: Neil Macdonald { }

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I began this life about 50 miles East of New York City, in Fairfield County, Connecticut, and would probably be a suicide statistic if it wasn't for the 'Real' friends I made in Vermont, New Hampshire & upper New York State. Being creative and sensitive has its ups and downs - mostly up lately- loving life and love in Atlantic Canada. :)